What is the best version of MacOS to run on a MBP 2009

So I recently picked up a 2009 Macbook Pro for super cheap and installed Mavericks and Monterey. Mavericks of course runs great and enjoyable but its a bit outdated and cannot run lots of modern applications. Monterey looks beautiful and with an SSD it is quick however I can feel that navigating through the menus and many apps take their time to load or dont work properly (due to not having metals graphics) and yes I know this is to be expected from a 2009 laptop. I would like to ask for recommendations from people who have similar specs on which MacOS they think works really well on this Macbook Pro which also allows for modern apps like discord, up to dateish web browers, iMovie and other apps that one would use on a daily basis that shouldn't tax too much performance on this laptop. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciative!

Author: @derek898989