Where does your aliveness take you?
Exploring aliveness as a clue for meaning
It was the summer of 2002. I was experiencing my first crush against the backdrop of a days-long wedding gathering at my maternal grandparents’ place in Muzaffarpur, Bihar. Every song had meaning, every cloud, every drop of rain - felt alive.
When I think about my growing up years, there are moments like that that stand out. Conversations and debates with family members on the nights when the electricity was gone, afternoons with hours of uninterrupted, unscrutinized play during vacations at our grandparents’, the sound of the azaan mixed with temple bells from a distance, summer nights stargazing on the roof and being the receiver and sharer of absolutely creative, mystical, sometimes hilarious, sometimes bone-chilling, larger than life stories, moments of writing and creating and surrendering to the impulse of creation that I never questioned then, evenings with my best friend in her balcony making meaning of the world together, pakodas in the monsoon, weaving flower garlands with my dadi, moments of witnessing something striking in nature like a line of ants, a forest from a bus or train window, butterflies that were so pretty that I wondered if they were real, or a wounded bird that we tended to, fireflies. Moments of absolute connection, un-self-consciousness, awe, wonder.
Sometimes these moments were shaped differently. Sometimes they looked like seeing injustice and suffering and feeling a deep call to act and serve. Sometimes, they took the shape of righteous rage transformed on paper or in a shaky act of defiance or intervention. Whatever shape they took, they were unmistakably moments of feeling more alive. Growing up, they weren’t too many, but they were enough to shape an unquestioning, mostly unconscious understanding of what life was meant to be like.
When I look at the arc of my life, I see that this aliveness was an anchor. It has been my journey to stray from it and return - I can recall entire relationships or pursuits where I didn’t experience aliveness, and it took a while for me to arrive at the knowing that that situation was not for me.
My sister-in-law asked me recently what has allowed me to walk away from things not meant for me and create a life that feels, at least for now, mostly aligned with who I am. I didn’t have an answer then. But the question stayed with me. I think it is a subconscious inner knowing that it is possible to live in a way that feels alive. This knowing patiently waits for me when I meander to explore paths not meant for me but when it is clear that there is no further learning there, it comes up and pulls me back home.
In my work with people and systems, I often encounter a poverty of imagination. This poverty is systemically induced. Inherently, we have all experienced aliveness - however brief. But we forget this clue to a more meaningful experience of life because that is not what our dominant systems reward.
Our aliveness and awareness of it, is a counter-force to the system that needs us to obey, consume, compete and produce. I have sat across from people who are afraid to dream, who are afraid to want what they want because the system tells us what to want. And, I have seen that with slowness, trust and safety, most of us are able to slowly catch the thread of our aliveness again. I have been part of organizations and groups that are alive, where our aliveness is not only permitted but longed for, because people know that that is where our deepest contribution lives. I know, in my bones, that the reclamation of our aliveness is possible not just individually, but collectively.
I have found that there is no single path back to aliveness. But there are doorways, and different ones open for different people at different points of time.
For some, it begins with just noticing the glimmers - the small moments when something in us lights up signaling what we care about.
For others, it arrives through flow - through the pursuits where effort dissolves and something larger seems to move through us, pointing towards our gifts.
I have watched people find their way back through memory - a living felt sense of I was most myself then, which becomes a compass for now.
I have also seen aliveness return through wounding and the medicine of grief. The places where we have gone numb often mark where our aliveness was taken from us, and tending to those places can become a profound act of reclamation.
And then there is righteous anger - the kind that hasn’t curdled into cynicism - which I have come to trust as aliveness in disguise, a signal that something is worth our deepest, most courageous engagement.
I am still learning how to talk about the work I do in the world, but I will make an attempt. At the centre of my work is the singular intention of a healing world - a world where we all find and bring our unique, most alive gifts to each other. This world feels alive to me, woven with beauty, love and courage. When I imagine it, I imagine beautiful communities in reciprocity with nature, learning experiences that feel like exhales, organizations that thrive because they are built from the deepest, most joyful places within us.
This is where my aliveness takes me. Where does yours?
❤️