Editor’s Note: Is anything ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Tell him about your lifelong or in-the-moment problems at dearjames@theatlantic.com.Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear James” in your inbox.Dear James,My late mother’s second husband was pretty mean and made no bones about disliking me in his heyday. But now he’s in his 90s, he has no other family, and I feel guilty about how I actively ignore him. (Just avoiding him isn’t an option because he lives next door to my sister.) I’m generally a caring person, but he was the source of so much agitation during his time with my mother that I’ve told myself I don’t owe him anything.Am I right to ignore him? Or should I rise above my petty grievances to check on him and take him casseroles?Dear Reader,Petty grievances: That’s the stuff. Juicy animosities, reared mushroomlike in the darkness.This might be a good moment to explain that, although I have evangelized for the values of niceness and positivity in this column, I am neither an especially nice nor an especially positive person. Day to day, I’m as grumpy and jaundiced as the next man. Not yet as far gone as Evelyn Waugh’s Gilbert Pinfold (“The tiny kindling of charity which came to him through his religion sufficed only to temper his disgust and change it to boredom.”) but getting there. Definitely getting there.However, I happen to know—with the same bland certainty that I know my own name—that loving your neighbor and looking on the bright side are the way to go. They just are.So I’m going to say: Yes, you should check up on this grisly old boy, this diminished antagonist. You should be kind to him. The universe has placed him squarely in your path, right next to your sister’s house, so the fact of his continuing existence must be reckoned with.Actively ignoring somebody is stressful. Better to go in generously, wearing the mighty breastplate of total undefendedness. He’s not actual family, this guy, so even if he’s snippy or insulting, or rejects your overtures, he can’t reach in and pluck those deep bass strings of neurosis. He can only irritate. Plus he’s older, and drained of his former power, like a washed-up supervillain. You can handle him! Look at it, if it’s helpful, as a rebalancing of the scales. Revenge is not a dish best served cold. Revenge is a piping-hot casserole, graciously presented to a lonely ex-tormentor.In touch with my lower self, and possibly yours,JamesBy submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.