Birds chirping in the trees,
the scritch of the squirrel’s claws as it runs across the branch
the wind rustling through the leaves
a motor coming to life in the distance
the raised voice of a mother calling out to her child
in the distance, carried on the wind, the temple bells ringing
the sounds of an ordinary morning.
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When we talk about feeling stuck in life, running on autopilot, or going through the motions, we are often referring to periods when our personal growth feels stalled. You want to move forward, but you can’t. You feel confused, stuck, like you’re drowning in mud. Then the anxiety, the overwhelm, and the feeling of worthlessness kick in.
But what if being stuck isn’t the problem? What if our understanding of personal growth and transformation is flawed?
One way of thinking about growth is to imagine it as a landscape.
I think of growth as a meandering path that twists and turns and sometimes folds in upon itself. Some paths are more well-developed than others, some trails more rock strewn, others bordered by wildflowers and lined with springy grass.
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Ikigai is often touted as the Japanese philosophy for finding your purpose, expressed through a colorful Venn diagram that helps you explore the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
But what if I told you this was a lie?
The first lie: Ikigai isn’t a deep philosophy about purpose, it’s a simple word that’s rarely used in Japan in casual conversation.
The second lie: Ikigai has nothing to do with finding a lofty life purpose or figuring out what you can be paid for.
Instead, the true meaning of Ikigai is a feeling — a sense that life is worth living, rooted in the small daily joys and experiences that make you think, “Damn! It’s good to be alive.”
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To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
— Mary Oliver, excerpt from In Blackwater Woods
My brave warrior Loki lost his two-year long battle with cancer and crossed over the rainbow bridge on 1 July 2025.
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It feels like we’ve been in crisis mode since years.
These are just some of the crises that have rocked India since the last couple of years. There have been many more protests and injustices on a global scale.
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Let’s talk about anxiety for a minute. The debilitating fear. The constant worry. The thoughts that circle around in your head at a hundred miles a minute. The heart palpitations. The shortness of breath. The certainty that everything is going to come crashing down around you.
We’ve all suffered from anxiety at some point in our lives, but did you know that 1 in 7 Indians – or 197.3 million people – were impacted by mental disorders of varying severity in 2017, of which 44.9 million Indians suffer from anxiety disorders. And this is 2017 data, so this number is sure to have skyrocketed.
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While scrolling through my Facebook feed last night, I came across a post asking for recommendations for therapists who deal with depression and anxiety in adults. I know, from previous experience, that depression isn’t well understood, and that it is notoriously difficult to find good, qualified therapists. So I went through the comments to see if the lady’s query had been answered and if I could share any recommendations with her.
But the comments were closed. This meant that she had either found the information she was looking for, or people had left their usual unhelpful advice on her post.
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We live in a world that is constantly trying to sell us what we want – or better yet, what we don’t even know we want. When I was still in college and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, one field that I was interested in was advertising. One of my aunts headed the creative department at a leading advertising agency, and in the course of various conversations with her, she asked me this: “how will you sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo?”
This is a question that has stuck with me through the years – and one that I reflect on from time to time. It isn’t so much about literally selling a fridge to an Eskimo, but about convincing someone who has no real need for something to buy said thing. That’s what good advertising and marketing is built on.
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That’s the simplest nutrition advice, ever. It’s the nutrition advice our ancestors would have given us. And still, we struggle.
The keto diet
The paleo diet
The South Beach diet
Intermittent fasting
Food combinations to avoidContinue reading
I’ve been reading the news these days with a sense of increasing alarm. Everywhere you look, all you see is hatred and anger and vitriol. The spread of fake news and fake paranoia has gripped not only India, but the rest of the world too.
This series of tweets this morning have forced me to speak my mind. Please, tell me that I am not the only one who feels my heart shatter into a million pieces each time we demonise a group of people as “the other”.Continue reading