Ever met someone who counted down the days to retirement, only to find themselves lost and restless six months later?
I watched this happen to a colleague at the warehouse where I worked in Melbourne. He’d been there for decades, constantly talking about how miserable the job made him, how he couldn’t wait to escape. When retirement finally came, we threw him a party, everyone congratulating him on his “freedom.”
Three months later, he was back visiting the warehouse every other week. Not because he missed the work, but because without it, he had to face something uncomfortable: the unhappiness wasn’t about the job at all.
This got me thinking during one of my breaks, sitting outside with my phone, reading about Buddhist concepts of suffering and attachment. Here I was, feeling like my education was being wasted, shifting TVs all day, convinced that my unhappiness stemmed from this “beneath me” job.
But what if work was just the scapegoat?
The convenient blame game
Work makes such an easy target, doesn’t it? Long hours, difficult bosses, mindless tasks, office politics. When you’re spending 40+ hours a week somewhere, it’s natural to point at it and say, “This is why I’m unhappy.”
And sure, toxic workplaces exist. Some jobs genuinely drain your soul. But here’s what I discovered during those warehouse days: sometimes we use work as a distraction from deeper issues we don’t want to face.
Think about it. When you’re busy complaining about your commute, your workload, or that annoying coworker, you don’t have to examine why you feel empty inside. You don’t have to confront the fact that maybe you’re not living aligned with your values. Or that you’ve been avoiding difficult conversations in your relationships. Or that you’ve never really figured out what brings you genuine joy.
Work becomes the villain in our story, and retirement becomes the promised land. But what happens when you remove the villain and the promised land turns out to be just… empty space?
Why retirement reveals what work concealed
Retirement strips away structure, routine, and purpose, often all at once. Suddenly, you have all this time, and if you haven’t developed other sources of meaning, that time becomes a mirror reflecting back everything you’ve been avoiding.
A friend’s father recently retired after 30 years in finance. He’d always complained about the stress, the meaningless spreadsheets, the corporate nonsense. But two months into retirement, he fell into a deep depression. Without the distraction of work, he had to face the fact that he’d never developed real hobbies, had let friendships atrophy, and had been using “I’m too busy with work” as an excuse to avoid dealing with marital issues for years.
The Buddhist concept of dukkha, which I explored in my book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego, teaches us that suffering often comes from our resistance to reality. We create stories about why we’re unhappy, but these stories sometimes protect us from harder truths.
During my warehouse period, I initially thought my unhappiness came from wasting my psychology degree. But spending those breaks diving into mindfulness practices, I realized something profound: I was unhappy because I was living according to someone else’s definition of success. The job was just highlighting a misalignment that already existed.
The illusion of “someday”
How many times have you caught yourself thinking, “I’ll be happy when…”? When I get that promotion. When I can quit this job. When I retire.
This “someday” thinking is seductive because it lets us off the hook for addressing our unhappiness right now. It’s easier to endure present misery when you believe relief is coming.
But happiness isn’t waiting for you at some future milestone. If you can’t find moments of contentment in your current life, retirement won’t magically grant you that ability. The same patterns, thoughts, and habits that make you unhappy now will follow you into retirement, just without the convenient excuse of work to blame.
I learned this the hard way during my warehouse days. I kept thinking happiness would come when I found a “real” job that matched my education. But the more I practiced being present, really paying attention to my thoughts and patterns, the more I realized I was the common denominator in my own unhappiness.
Building a life beyond work
So what’s the alternative? Start building a life that doesn’t revolve entirely around work long before retirement.
This doesn’t mean slacking off or not caring about your career. It means developing multiple sources of meaning and identity. When work is just one piece of your life puzzle rather than the entire picture, its power to make you miserable diminishes significantly.
During those warehouse shifts, I started small. Instead of ruminating about my “wasted potential” during breaks, I’d read. Not just career advice or job listings, but philosophy, psychology, books about meaning and purpose. I started meditating, even if just for five minutes in my car before a shift.
Slowly, I began to see work differently. It wasn’t my identity; it was just something I did to pay bills while I figured out what really mattered to me. This shift in perspective was liberating. The job hadn’t changed, but my relationship with it had.
The practice of presence
One of the most valuable lessons from that difficult period was learning to find peace regardless of external circumstances. The warehouse job became my crucible for practicing presence and acceptance.
Instead of constantly living in the future (“When I get out of here…”) or the past (“I should have made different choices…”), I started focusing on the now. The weight of the TV box in my hands. The rhythm of the work. The conversations with coworkers during lunch.
This is what my book Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego explores in depth: how to find contentment not by changing your circumstances, but by changing your relationship with them.
When you practice this regularly, something interesting happens. Work becomes less of a source of suffering and more of a neutral activity. And when work loses its power to make you miserable, it also loses its power to be the thing you need to escape from to be happy.
Starting where you are
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in these patterns, know that you don’t have to wait until retirement to address them. In fact, waiting might make things harder.
Start examining your relationship with work now. Are you using it as an excuse to avoid other areas of your life? Are you putting all your happiness eggs in the retirement basket? What would your life look like if work suddenly disappeared tomorrow, not financially, but emotionally and structurally?
Begin cultivating interests, relationships, and practices outside of work. Not as an escape from work, but as a way of building a fuller life. Join that book club. Start that garden. Reconnect with old friends. Learn to meditate. Develop a spiritual practice.
Most importantly, stop waiting for someday. The peace you’re seeking isn’t in retirement; it’s in learning to be okay with where you are right now, even if where you are isn’t where you want to be forever.
Final thoughts
That colleague who kept visiting the warehouse after retirement? Last I heard, he’d started volunteering, joined a hiking group, and was finally addressing some long-ignored health issues. He told me retirement forced him to realize the job wasn’t the problem; it was how he’d been living his entire life.
Looking back at my warehouse days, I’m grateful for that humbling experience. It taught me that happiness doesn’t come from having the perfect job or from escaping work altogether. It comes from learning to be present with whatever life throws at you, from building meaning beyond your job title, and from taking responsibility for your own contentment.
Whether you’re years from retirement or decades away, the time to start building a life you don’t need to escape from is now. Because if you’re deeply unhappy at work, retirement might not fix that unhappiness. It might just leave you alone with it, wondering why the freedom you waited so long for feels so empty.
