21/09/2025

ON SUNDAY September 21, 2025 theSunday Special XII

Not broken … when nothing feels wrong, but something still feels off.”

It is hard to talk about This foggy state is challenging to articulate. You try to share it, but the words sound vague. “I don’t know... things just feel off.” You downplay it. You apologise for it. You add a nervous laugh and move on. Then comes the internal gaslighting. Maybe you are just being lazy. Maybe it is your hormones. Maybe you need to be more grateful. Maybe a productivity app will help. But emotions do not always come with clear logic or backstories. Sometimes they just need to be acknowledged – not solved, not reframed, just heard. We are often told that gratitude is the answer. Yes, gratitude matters. But it is not a cure for emptiness. You can be grateful for your job and still feel stuck. You can love your partner and still feel a sense of loneliness. You can have a “normal” life and still yearn for colour, rhythm or deeper meaning. Wanting more does not mean you are ungrateful. It means you are alive. That quiet longing – for beauty, for awe, for something that stirs your insides – is not a flaw. It is part of what makes you human. Start small, not big When you feel stuck in this fog, it is tempt ing to chase a dramatic fix. Quit your job. Move to an island paradise. Join a monastery. Reinvent everything. But sometimes, what you need is not a revolu tion, just a reconnection. A quiet act that says, “I am still here.” That might be ten minutes of sitting outside at dusk. Doodling on a napkin. Listening to a playlist that does not try to cheer you up, but meets you where you are. These small gestures do not fix everything, but they help you remember there is still something inside you worth listening to. Often, the fog settles in when you have been reacting to everything – messages, deadlines, obligations – but initiating nothing for yourself. So pause, breathe and ask gently, “What would feel slightly more alive this week?” Sometimes, it is enough just to choose something – a walk, a call, a poem and let that be your anchor. You are not broken, just between chapters. Not every season is dramatic or high-achieving. Some are quiet, intro spective and deeply necessary. Stillness isn’t stagnation; it may be cocooning, recalibrating, preparing you for something more aligned. Growth is often invisible while it’s happening. If nothing feels right, trust you’re not alone. You are not ungrateful or falling behind, just in a quieter chapter that asks you to pause and return to yourself. You don’t need a five-year plan or all the answers. Sometimes one real breath is enough.

When nothing’s wrong but nothing feels right Y OU are not in crisis. Your job is manageable. Your body is holding up. Your family is, for the most part, intact. On paper, everything looks fine.

BY CHRIS LOW

Quiet ache … many live here silently, without knowing what to call it.”

Yet, internally, something feels off. You cannot quite name it. There is no dramatic trigger to point to. But the spark you once felt – in laughter, in music, in the texture of everyday life – seems to have faded. You forget what day it is, not because you are too busy, but because every day has started to feel eerily similar. There is no neat label for this state. It does not appear on standard medical forms and it rarely makes it into ev eryday conversation. Yet psychologists are beginning to acknowledge it more

T he fog within … emotional flatness doesn’t always come with a name.

seriously – emotional flatness, existential fatigue, low-grade dissociation. We, aver age Malaysians, call it the meh state. The more sophisticated ones describe it as a soul bruise.

It is not quite burnout, although burnout may be close by. It is not quite depression either, though left unchecked, it can lean in that direction. Instead, it feels like drifting – a subtle disconnection from joy, purpose and sometimes even your sense of self. Life does not need to collapse to feel heavy. Sometimes, it is the unrelenting rhythm of routine – the same emails, the same traffic, the same meals reheated one more time. Add to that the emotional noise of endless group chats, world events, rising costs and the subtle pressure to always be “on” and it is easy to see how we arrive here. In Asian culture, especially, where resilience is prized and emotional restraint is often encouraged, we tend to soldier on. Complaining feels indulgent. So we tick all the boxes, but somewhere along the way, those boxes stopped belonging to us. We start living as caretakers of our own lives, not participants.

You can be okay and still feel off – both can be true.