Why do my old work friends feel so far away now?

I sold flour in the market for forty years. One day I stopped selling. I still walked down every morning, stood in my old spot, greeted the men buying grain. After a week, they stopped greeting back. Not because they hated me — because I had nothing to sell, and so nothing to say, and neither did they. You think the problem is that your friends kept working and you did not. That is not quite it. The real problem is smaller and stranger: your friendships ran on a schedule you never chose — the workday. Now the schedule is gone, and nobody rebuilt the friendship on purpose. It just sits there, waiting for a meeting that will never be called again. So the fix is not a new philosophy of aging. It is a new calendar entry, made with other people who also have empty mornings now. Loneliness like this is not a character flaw. It is an unstaffed front desk. Staff it.