Not every season of life asks us to find a new path; sometimes, it asks us to tend to the one we’ve already chosen. At the Speed of Flowers by Deepak Ramola explores this quiet distinction between seeking and preserving, offering a thoughtful reflection on purpose, growth and learning to bloom in your own time.
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There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who need help finding their light and those who need help preserving their light.
I think of Melissa, who I met at a conference three years ago where I was speaking. She had just joined the board of a not-for-profit working on food hunger after nearly two decades as a consultant at one of the world’s top management firms. She had just returned from a five-month sabbatical volunteering in Guatemala and was considering applying to a yoga certification course in Bali. She came to our meeting with a notebook of possible questions, the way some people carry a list of restaurants they want to try. ‘I just want to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing here,’ she said once, meaning her job, meaning the earth, meaning both at once. She was forty-one. The consulting work had been a financial security decision more than a love affair. The not-for-profit was a way to give back. She had read more psychology and self-help books that summer than I had read in two years.
Melissa was a seeker in the season I met her in. Her wonder was wide and unanchored. She was on a quest to understand where she truly belonged. By sampling careers, talking to many people, volunteering and prototyping, she was gathering data before committing to something she could call home.
My friend Aditi Gupta, on the other hand, has been tending the same fire for over a decade. Aditi runs Menstrupedia, an organization she co-founded in 2012 with her husband Tuhin Paul when the two of them were design students at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. What began as her thesis project—a comic book to teach young girls about menstruation in a country where the subject lives in hushed tones—has, in the years since, reached fourteen million girls, and been translated into twenty languages across twenty-three countries. Through their comics and educational programmes, Aditi and her team have fought the taboo around health and well-being one classroom at a time. Aditi knows her passion lies with informing the youth. When she went on Shark Tank India and walked away with funding from the investor Namita Thapar, it was not to find her path; it was to widen one she had already walked for a decade.
Aditi, in this season of life, is preserving her light.
Most of us are a little bit of Melissa and Aditi, depending on the season of our lives. Recognizing which one you are, right now, can be a useful navigational tool.
Both kinds of people need help navigating their journeys but the kind of support they require is arguably different. Seekers need tools to uncover meaning; preservers need spaces to deepen it. Both call for an attentive examination of one’s inner landscape, but their compasses point in different directions. Both need courage. Both need company.
The seekers belong in folders marked Exploring or Figuring it out. They are in search of a spark, a purpose or meaning. The preservers, on the other hand, might file themselves under Sustaining, Building or Tending. Their wonder hasn’t dimmed; it has simply traded away the wandering.
For years, I was a seeker. I asked the world: ‘Was that poem any good?’; ‘Did that story matter?’; ‘Did I teach well enough?’ I held out my work like a child offering a crayon drawing, eager to know if I was any closer to being enough. I gathered yes’s and no’s to understand my potential. Now, I find myself asking different questions: ‘Can I try something new without breaking what I’ve built?’; ‘Is there a way to be both brave and rooted?’
As a result, the people around me changed too. Once, I needed cheerleaders and now, I need collaborators. I don’t need someone to tell me I’m good; I need someone who can hold the net while I attempt the next leap.
Preserving your light isn’t about resisting the world’s distractions. It’s about tuning your instrument, so it doesn’t fall out of harmony with your purpose. It means making time to listen to yourself, to replenish your reserves, to work on things that set your heart aglow. Only when we feel safe in our own light do we feel brave enough to share it with others.
Truth be told, the world is generous with resources for seekers. Everyone wants to hand you a map when you say you’re lost. But very few know how to support you when you’ve already arrived somewhere, and you just want to stay, go deeper, or wander sideways. They mean well, but they offer flashlights to someone who’s already found the sunrise.
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