The Quiet Sadness Before a Big Leap
It’s evening again. I’m walking the dog under the streetlights, the city slowing into night. This is usually the time when my thoughts loosen, when the day’s noise fades and feelings bubble up. Lately, one particular feeling has surprised me — a faint sadness almost sitting beneath the excitement of my plans.
On paper, everything is moving forward.
On paper, everything is moving forward. I sold the camera lens I wasn’t using—800 euros in my pocket. With that and a bit more saved, I can buy almost all the tools I need to begin woodworking. My friend and I revived our business plan; secured my income for at least another year. The architect needs to fix a few minor issues with our building permit, and construction on the new house might start next summer.
I’m also spending more time at home than ever before. Meals with my wife, our daughter on my lap, diaper changes, bedtime routines. She’s calling “DAD” all the time, running to me with her arms up, and I melt every time she does that. In short—all of the things I’ve longed for are slowly becoming reality.
And yet, under it all, a strange feeling: sad-ish, empty-ish, melancholic. Not despair, not depression, more like the ghost of grief in a moment that should feel like relief.
The Grief Hidden in Excitement
At first, I wondered if this was just a rebound after weeks of being revved up with plans and action, maybe my nervous system was settling. Or maybe spending so much time between “backwards” (my mother) and “forwards” (my daughter) was making me more aware of time’s passage, of impermanence. Or maybe it was simply exhaustion.
But as I drove home one night, thinking about the new tools, the new shop in the old house, the move to the hill, it hit me: what I was feeling was grief for the old life I haven’t even left yet.
Right now, I dislike our current apartment. The power plant view, the city dump, the overheated summers, the noise, the endless concrete. And yet I can already feel the nostalgia rising for it. I can already picture myself missing this cramped, imperfect place once we move into the beautiful new house — as if by gaining something better, I’ve lost something precious.
It sounds irrational. But it’s profoundly human.
Anticipatory Nostalgia
Psychologists seem to call this anticipatory nostalgia. It’s the strange sadness that comes before a change, even when the change is good. Our minds bond with what’s familiar, even if it’s ugly, stressful, or imperfect. When we imagine leaving, we don’t only focus on what we’ll gain; we quietly mourn what will be gone.
Moving house, changing careers, shifting creative direction, all of these stir up this cocktail of excitement and grief. We’re not just leaving a place or a job; we’re leaving a version of ourselves who lived there, who survived those years. And our psyche feels that loss, even if we can’t explain it.
This is why even “upgrades” feel bittersweet: a new job, a new city, a new stage of life. Every birth is also a little funeral—saying goodbye to one chapter while welcoming another.
What the Old World Still Gives Us
This sadness doesn’t mean the change is wrong. It means we’re alive enough to notice the texture of transition. When it comes, we can treat it almost like a ritual:
Pause and honor it. “Yes, part of me is sad to leave this behind, even if it wasn’t perfect.”
Name what we’re grateful for in the old. “This ugly apartment still gave us shelter, meals, laughter with our daughter.”
Then turn toward the new. “And soon, I’ll hear silence instead of engines. I’ll see green instead of gray.”
In Buddhist and Taoist practice, this idea appears again and again. A monk sweeps the same courtyard every morning—one sweep with the broom, another, another—not to reach a finish line but to be present for each stroke. Change, too, is swept in small strokes. We cannot leap into a future without carrying our past. We can only fold it carefully, like a futon at dawn, and make space for the day ahead.
The Lesson I’m Trying to Learn
The melancholy I feel now is part of shedding an old skin. It’s the psyche stitching past and future together. I’m learning to let that sadness be, to thank the old life, and to take one small step into the new. One sweep of the broom at a time.
