We’ll Always Have Paris
How an airport delay shaped my next decade
Welcome
This blog explores how we find meaning, purpose and aliveness in our work and lives. It’s about the questions that shape us, the ideas that won’t leave us alone, and how we can live in a way that feels more like who we really are.
The beginning
It’s 2015. I work for a large international development organisation and I’m trying to get home from Burkina Faso, where I’ve been delivering advocacy training for the past week. I’ve been travelling overnight, exhausted after the hideous exercise of trying to sleep upright, face up next to strangers, claustrophobic and uncomfortable. Nice try, Steph.
I’m transferring in Paris before finally getting back to London. The flight was late leaving, so as the little seatbelt light finally switches off, it’s all systems go. I race across the terminal in an exhausted, frazzled state and am delighted to find my flight to the UK hasn’t taken off yet. Relief sweeps over me, and pride swells at my finest athletic achievement. I smile at the check‑in staff and express my delight at this victory.
Grounded
Except I’m not getting on this flight.
While I made it in person, the airline assumed I wouldn’t, and even though I could run like a lunatic through the terminal, the same couldn’t be said for my luggage. I’m told I’ll have to wait eight long, exhaustion‑fuelled hours for the next flight with an available seat.
For the next ten minutes, I watch the passengers depart, unaware of how lucky they are. Do they look smug? I’m sure they do. I can sense it.
The book
So, with a long wait ahead, I pull out my Kindle and start reading a book that’s been on my list for a while: A Million Little Ways by Emily P. Freeman. I start reading and I’m transfixed. It’s one of those books that leaps off the page and feels like, despite having no idea I exist, she wrote it just for me.
The book centres on the idea that we each have a unique design and are here to live that out in “a million little ways”. Honouring the core of who we are and putting our “art” into the world, whatever form that takes and without fear of how it’s received, is what the world needs from us. Wow.
She writes: “Art is what happens when you dare to be who you really are.”
It reminds me of that famous quote often attributed to Howard Thurman: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
What makes you feel alive? What makes you feel most yourself? What are the forgotten, neglected, pushed‑aside ideas or dreams that seem too nonsensical or silly to give time to?
Emily also writes: “I think perhaps everyone has crazy ideas, but most people are afraid to consider them. There are a rare few who pursue them, but they wouldn’t realise it, because to them they aren’t crazy ideas. They’re just ideas.”
The question
The question that has stayed with me and now shapes this work is this: how does this work in practice?
How do I figure out what makes me feel more myself, more alive, more aligned with my design? How can living out the “art I was born to create” fit alongside jobs, a mortgage and a young family with competing priorities? How exactly can this be done?
It’s been about a decade since I started asking these questions, maybe longer since I first heard, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” These “Who am I?” and “What do I do?” questions never really go away; if anything, they just grow louder.
Let’s explore
Welcome to Work and Why. This blog is a space to explore these questions together, to learn from others who are navigating them, to see how people are living out their core in the world and to discover what we can learn and be inspired by.
I’ll share my reflections along the way and hope you’ll join the journey. I’m excited, and I’m trying to honour my own core, my endless curiosity about what makes people feel alive, more themselves and energised. I hope you find this a useful space.
À bientôt
So yes, travel delays are still officially the worst, but thank you, Emily, for keeping me company that day. I hope this can be a practical exploration of the questions you sparked for me. We’ll always have Paris.