When the World You Built No Longer Fits

There comes a moment, often after a major transition like retirement, when you look around and realise the life you've built no longer feels like it belongs to you. The routines, the roles, even the symbols of achievement begin to feel like walls. You may feel like a prisoner in your own world — a world shaped by duty, ambition and love, but also by sacrifice and momentum.

It’s easy, then, to fall into the trap of "should."

“I should be happy.”

“I should feel free now.”

“I should be making the most of it.”

But "should" is rarely helpful. It speaks with the voice of expectation, not truth.

The truth might be messier: that you feel disoriented. That you're mourning a role that once gave your days direction. That you're proud of what you’ve built, yet unsure of who you are without it.

None of that is failure. It's human.

This isn’t the end of the story. It’s a pause. A recalibration. A chance, perhaps for the first time in a long while, to ask: "What now? What matters to me, not as a leader or provider, but as a man — the man I've grown to be, but whom I don't know very well?"

Maybe freedom isn’t the absence of responsibility. Maybe it’s the space to live more deeply aligned with who you are now, not who you were expected to be.

Take your time. There’s no map for this.

You’re not alone. Many of us, in one way or another, are quietly unlocking the doors of our own self-made prisons.

It starts with one deceptively simple question: "Who am I?"