Figuring Out Wholeness

a state of being or ever becoming

Abstract landscape by Helen Frankthaler

I have been silent for a while. Not absent, just busy searching and moving between different parts of life. Without getting lost in the vanity of this day, I thought it would be a good day to show up. I want this space to be non-urgent and forever emergent with my whole presence. Back to the landscape of my inner being, I have never felt this whole in a long time. I love this timely share by Trivarna Hariharan that has been going around my timeline.

“February has ripened into love, and I have become whole and complete” - Miklós Radnóti

This moment as I furiously type away my thoughts with the sun streaming into the room. Everything feels whole.

Back to the topic of wholeness. I looked up the etymology of whole, I like the Proto Indo-European root origin "whole, uninjured, of good omen."

For much of my life, I imagined wholeness as a milestone. It's like filling the tiny empty craters created by living life. A destination, something to be achieved, a point where all the fragments of myself, my work, my relationships, and my creative yearnings would fall into perfect alignment. A fulfilling symmetry that I have been foolishly searching for the longest time.

But, life has a way of unfurling splendidly in the most ordinary moments. I can write a short book on my encounter with the most imperfect moments that seemingly made me feel complete and joyful about this enchanting life. I am starting to see it differently. I bet it comes with age sometimes. I am a proud late bloomer on my own accord :)

The Birds and the Waiting

I may have expressed my love for the tiny birds and my walks in my earlier essays too. This year, I embarked on the journey of feeding the birds that I love so much. I ordered the best food that was approved by RPSB. And so it began….

I enthusiastically carried the food and started to place the food in the spots frequented by my friends. On the first day, I offered the seeds. They strutted in front of me while feasting on worms :D. Every morning, as I walked through the woods, I carried bird feed in my pocket, hoping to draw my small, elusive friends closer. I scattered the seeds, waited, and walked away disappointed. Day after day, I returned, placing the feed on a broken tree trunk, but the birds either hovered around or didn't show up.

I am sure that the younger version of Irene would have given up or changed the approach. I would have changed locations or sought an easier path, a place where birds gathered in abundance. But something in me has shifted. I continued showing up. On the sixth day, just as I placed the feed down, they came. Tiny birds, fluttering around, nibbling at what I had left behind.

It wasn't a grand theatric moment. In the quiet, ordinary moment, my patience was rewarded. In that moment as the morning joggers hurried by me, I stood there soaking in the happiness. You might be able to hear my happiness in my voice. I chuckled at the new friendship and reflected on it. The moment was a mic drop from the Universe of Metaphors.

What if wholeness is not about arriving? It is indeed returning, again and again, to the process itself.

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The Changing Shape of Wholeness

If I had tried to define wholeness at twenty, it would have been sharp and focused. I would have tied it to anchors of success in a career, clarity of purpose, or the validation of people I loved. But now, at this stage of life, it is impermanent in the true zen sense :) The river keeps on flowing becoming whole at different intervals.

I am learning to flow.

"The river flows by itself, following its own course. A cloud never needs to force itself to transform. It just transforms naturally." - Thich Nhat Han

And perhaps that's what wholeness has become for me - less about completion, more about unfolding. Less about answers, a lot more about the space to hold questions.

Learning to Live in the Questions

I go back to Rilke again and again. When he wrote, "Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart… live in the question." And perhaps that's what I am learning as my hair has started greying. The younger me would have resisted the ambiguity. She would have demanded certainty. Now I feel deeply that wholeness is not a singular state - it is fluid, shifting with time, experience, and perspective.

This understanding emerges most clearly in my meditation practice. Where I once sought perfect stillness, I now welcome the restless days as part of the rhythm. The mat is no longer a space to escape but a space to gather in stillness. The problems are still the same. I am confident and know that I am going to solve them with grace and chutzpah :D

This shift extends to my relationships too. Living abroad as an introvert, I made a universe of my close bonds that often sank due to distance and varying life circumstances. But like my practice of meditation, I've learned to embrace the ebb and flow. I once clung to certainty but now understand that people come, go, and return in different ways. The return precedes the absence.

I lived in the questions for the last five years. I can confirm that if one has patience then the answers show up. But now, I see that my work, like everything else, is evolving. What felt like purpose five years ago is not the same as what drives me today. Wholeness in work is about embracing change, allowing new callings to emerge, and trusting that alignment comes through movement, not rigidity. I am excited to build and keep learning to find wholeness sometimes in the liminal and sometimes in inordinary moments.

I have a story about my relationship with John. I will save it for another time. John O'Donohue writes, "May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder." That is what wholeness feels like now - a creative act, not something to be found but something to be made.

Like that morning in the woods, I wasn't just learning about the birds. I was learning about myself. About how to show up. About how to trust the timing. About how to let go of forcing answers and instead, let things unfold.

An Invitation

So maybe this is the real lesson: wholeness is not something we arrive at. It is something we return to, something we create. If you've been searching for it through work, through love, through meaning, know this: you are already whole, in motion, in process, in becoming. And like any great work of art, wholeness is never about finishing. It is about staying in the making.

It is like creativity, a conversation between what we know and what we have yet to learn. And the most beautiful thing? We are always in the middle of the masterpiece.

Let's keep painting and finding the hues of wholeness that fit the shape of the holes we carry in life.

Ending this with a favourite short poem by John O’Donohue. Here is a clip from today. The birds now recognise me :)

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                                      Fluent by John O'Donohue 


                                                   I would love to live
                                                   Like a river flows,
                                                   Carried by the surprise
                                                   Of its own unfolding.