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Illustration by Alex Chen
After three years of retirement, I’ve learned that life doesn’t stay still. It moves quietly between feeling lost, low and content. Maybe that in-between is where growth truly happens.
Mornings arrive softly now. I wake without urgency, only curiosity about what the hours might hold. Three years into retirement, the noise of ambition has faded, leaving a stillness that I am trying to figure out.
Those first three years passed in a happy blur of travel and road trips, of long-needed rest and small acts of self-care, of laughter shared with friends, revisiting family and distant relatives. More time was spent with my husband, just the two of us again, a life rediscovered. These days, it’s our kids who call to ask what new adventures we’ve been chasing, as if the roles have quietly reversed.
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Here I am, standing still after years in motion. I’ve seen so much of the world, yet it feels like I’ve only brushed its surface. My home looks familiar but slightly foreign, as though it’s waiting for me to belong again. I tell myself to declutter, but every piece carries a story I’m not ready to let go. Even my neighbourhood feels different now, as if I’ve returned to a place that moved on without me.
Am I lost, depressed or quietly content? Do I need to name what I feel or can I simply flow through these shifting states of emptiness and ease, confusion and calm and call it life?
Is it hopeless to feel lost? Maybe being lost isn’t always a bad thing. Maybe it’s not hopeless at all. Maybe it’s a sign that I’ve outgrown where I was and I’m still finding my way toward what comes next. It feels like standing between chapters: The old story no longer fits and the new one hasn’t yet begun. I feel restless, searching, uncertain but perhaps this, too, is the spark of transformation. To be lost is, in a way, to be on my way, even if the destination isn’t clear.
Then there are times when being lost deepens, when colours fade and the world feels unbearably heavy. Depression is more than sadness. It’s the quiet disappearance of energy, when even getting through breakfast feels like an achievement. The smallest tasks seem impossible and joy refuses to surface no matter how hard I reach for it.
All I can do then is close my eyes and drift somewhere else. It’s a weight that paralyzes, yet I’ve learned to name it. Because naming it is the first step toward healing. Depression is not weakness. It’s my mind and body asking for care, for gentleness, for self-forgiveness.
Sometimes, I am neither lost nor low. Just simply content. It’s the kind of peace that doesn’t demand joy or excitement, only presence. Not complacency, not ecstasy, just calm. Contentment, I’ve learned, is quiet; it’s born from gratitude for all the blessings, both big and small. It comes when I stop comparing, when I begin to accept, when I take a deep breath and realize that this moment, imperfect as it is, is enough.
The truth? I move through all three states, sometimes in one week, sometimes in a single day. I can feel lost and still be grateful. I can be content and still wonder what comes next. I can heal from depression and still have quiet, heavy days.
It bothered me then but as days wore on, I’ve come to see my life now as a shifting landscape, always changing, never fixed. Maybe the goal isn’t to stay content, but to move gently through whatever the heart holds, moment by moment.
It really is a beautiful blur between them.
Mona Leano-Arindaeng lives in Toronto.