Learning how to land

There is a particular kind of quiet that arrives after something big is over.

Not the satisfying quiet of relief.
Not the soft exhale you imagine comes after the work is done.

This quiet feels hollow. Flat.
Like standing in a beautiful room with the lights turned low, wondering why nothing is moving inside you.

I have come to recognize this moment.

It often appears right after life delivers what you worked so hard for.

The course ends.
The house keys land in your palm.
The promotion is announced.
The season of intensity finally loosens its grip.

You tell yourself you should feel happy now.

And yet, once the rush fades, something goes dull.

Not sadness exactly.
More like color draining from the edges of things.
A low hum of existential unease.
A wondering, almost whispered, is this it?

A couple of years ago, I found myself inside that quiet.

It was a rare morning with nowhere to be. Both my kids were playing easily together. Sunlight poured across the floor. My coffee was still warm in my hands.

From the outside, it looked like a moment people dream about.

My family was healthy.
We had just secured our dream home.
My acupuncture practice was thriving.
I had opened my own clinic.

This was supposed to be arrival.

Instead, my body felt strangely blank.

My mind could name all the reasons this moment mattered. My body did not respond. There was no wave of joy. No sense of fullness. Just a flat, almost confusing neutrality.

I remember thinking, quietly and with some fear, what was all of this for?

I tried to correct myself.
Tried to appreciate harder.
Tried to summon gratitude like a muscle.

Nothing changed.

For a while, I assumed I needed a new goal. Another vision to chase. Something to light me up again. But every time I reached for more, my body recoiled. It felt heavy. Collapsed. Unwilling.

I was tired in a way ambition could not solve.

What eventually became clear was not flattering, but it was honest.

I had spent years in motion.
Years building, organizing, holding, producing.
I knew how to move forward.
I did not know how to settle.

So when the striving stopped, there was nothing waiting underneath it. No pleasure. No spaciousness. Just a nervous reaching for distraction.

I see this same moment in the women I work with.

They tell me everything is technically going well. Life looks good. They are not falling apart.

And yet, when the intensity lifts, there is a strange emptiness.

They watch shows they barely care about.
They read books they cannot remember.
They scroll not for pleasure, but for relief.

Not because they are lazy or uninspired.
Because they are capped out.

They have been busy for so long that when life finally offers stillness, their body does not know how to receive it.

What often disappears in long seasons of responsibility is joy that has no job to do.

The kind of joy that is useless and essential at the same time.

Creative impulses fade because they do not serve a function.
Time with friends gets postponed because it does not feel productive.
Beauty becomes optional. Play becomes indulgent.

Maybe you once loved to paint or draw and have not touched it in years.
Maybe lingering conversations with people you love are what you crave, but they feel impractical.
Maybe pleasure itself feels distant, like a language you used to speak fluently and slowly forgot.

Flatness is not a sign that you chose the wrong life.

It is often a sign that your body never had the chance to land inside the one you built.

Joy does not arrive the moment you cross a finish line. It grows slowly, quietly, when there is room to feel without producing, enjoying without measuring, resting without justification.

Now, when things go dull, I listen.

I no longer assume something is missing. I ask where I have been moving for too long without letting myself arrive.

Flatness has become a signal, not a failure.

A pause at the threshold.

An invitation to stop chasing the next moment and finally step into the one already holding me.

And when I do, color returns.