Why I dance in the rain

and why you should too!

Oct 18, 2023

What does dancing in the rain have to do with leading? Or learning? Or building innovative, high-performing cultures? Everything, as I discovered in the aftermath of surviving the first year of the pandemic.

Decembers in Singapore tend to be rain-drenched time-lapses, capsules of life lived in slow motion when we have the time to sip and savor.

One day in December 2020, as I sat painting at the dining table and watching the breeze weave through the butterfly palm hedge in my patio like a Mexican wave, the drizzle became a downpour.

My 6yr old came running out in her swimsuit, little brother in tow! “Mama, can we please, please, please dance in the rain? Pleeeeeaaaaasssee?” she cooed, bobbing up and down with playfully innocent brown eyes that reminded me of our German Shepherd as a puppy. I hesitated for only a moment. Then, to her surprise and mine, I jumped up, grabbed them both by their hands and skipped out to the garden.

That day, as I danced in the warm tropical afternoon rain with my kids, the raindrops seeped directly into my soul, and time slowed down as with each exhale I untied another coil of ‘should’s that held me hostage.

That one spontaneous moment of play which hangs large and vivid in the gallery of my life marked the start of my journey towards free-ranging of the soul, into a lighter, more joyous and human way of treading the world while still honoring the drive for competence and pursuit of mastery that consumed my 30s.

Beauty and joy slowly became goals worth pursuing in and of themselves.

What if we could all feel that sense of lightness and permission to be ourselves in our work and our lives? What if we could play with possibilities, mix flavors and colors to see what emerged?

What if mistakes aren’t WHO we are, but simply a way for us to figure out what works and what doesn’t?

My story, much like yours perhaps, is a story of beginnings. Of detours, mistakes and fresh starts. And so, we go farther back, to the beginning of when I lost touch with play.

When my first child was born in 2015, I became that mom.

I obsessively project-managed my child’s growth.

Nursing & food logs, check. Sleep schedules, check. Calendarized sensory play and socialization, check. Joining my kid in making mudpies? Fuhgeddaboutit!

It gave me a false sense of control in a situation where I felt woefully underprepared and seriously unqualified. Slowly, it also disconnected me from me - I lost touch with my instincts, with my sense of lightness and fun.

Three years later, we had a second kid and linear math stopped working.

I was also that mom now - sitting on the sidelines guarding the stroller, bags and lunch while the rest of the family slid down inflatable slides giddy with delight. My absence screams out from my phone’s image gallery. I was the one taking the pictures, but rarely in any of them.

Hoarding second-hand memories from the sidelines, instead of jumping in and making them.

All around me, I saw harried parents and caregivers in demanding careers hustling through life with synced calendars and checklists. Busy working towards a life that was passing us by unnoticed.

So many of us had forgotten what it meant to rest, to savor life, to fill our cups.

Then 2020 happened. The world was plunged into a pandemic-induced frenzy. It thrust HR professionals like me to the forefront of crisis management – we were pulled into the corporate frontlines in the fight to save livelihoods and safeguard lives as best we could.

The moment called for relentless external scanning, digesting emerging news and asking ‘so what?’ How did that affect our industry, our company performance, our employees? What did we need to do differently?

So many burning questions, so few safe answers.

2020: All systems go, hyper-focus on and push into sympathetic overdrive.

In a new reality engulfed by fear-laced adrenaline and crippling anxiety, leaders in all walks of life were pulling together pieces that made sense to them and responding as best they could. That included me.

Overseeing a significant employee population across multiple countries in Southeast Asia, as the HR Director I ran control tower with my crisis management team for decisions cutting across functions - from crisis response to holding the line on employee safety, business continuity planning to revamping the people strategy and building organizational resilience. The list was daunting and endless, the grind relentless.

We were white-water rafting into roaring class VI rapids with novice skills.

We were navigating dangerous, uncharted waters, unpredictable and with no known maps and no option to pull our rafts out to walk around. Two forces would determine our survival - our ability to read the waters & respond, and trusting our instincts & each other deeply.

This perma-crisis mode of operations persisted through all of 2020. We’d survived the worst, we thought, and vaccines were around the corner. We desperately needed some calm waters to recover, and the whole world seemed to be granting permission for a restful end of the year.

I remember arriving in the holiday season seeped bone deep in sepia-toned exhaustion, stumbling into my first few weeks off in the year.

Then something magical happened.

With no travel and limited socializing options, those three weeks of vacation in December became an oasis that started a slow healing of my soul.

My creative self had finally been given a peep-hole to breathe, because my performance-oriented self had finally had enough. Spending time with my kids, I learnt once again to laugh. My husband’s delicious high-teas and cold-ferment pizzas filled our bellies with love and joy.

I brewed kombucha and flavored them in themes that were reminiscent of stories from my past – pomegranate-lychee-rose had shades of first love, while jackfruit-tamarind and mango-chilli brought the endless Bangalore summers of my childhood to life. Experimenting with flavor combinations and finding themed inspiration gave me tactile and aesthetic pleasure that filled a deep void I hadn’t been aware existed.

I spent more time doing watercolors.

The following year, I picked up my brushes more often.

Watching the watercolor pigments dissolve into water, spread across the paper and interact with each other in sometimes unpredictable ways brought my focus to the moment. The more time I spent nurturing my watercolors skills at night, the more I found that my work during the day moved from performative to purpose-led.

The lightness that came with experimenting on paper and letting go translated into my work.

I started to become comfortable with both discovering the stories my colors wanted to tell and in bringing alive the structural elements through pen illustrations.

Organizational culture, inclusion and coaching came alive in vivid, unexpected ways when I began working more and more with what was emerging.

Being present, I became more aware of the breadth of my choices.

And that we always have a choice.

I was becoming equal parts explorer and mystic, researcher and architect.

The freedom I found in adopting a beginner’s mind, letting the moment reveal its lessons and using play as a way to learn, opened so many possibilities.

I found that I didn’t need to have all the answers as a leader - I could open up space for a dialogue, and co-create the best solutions with my team. In that process, I gave them permission to experiment too.

I was reflecting deeply on what gave me joy and meaning, stripping away at my definition of success, re-examining which parts truly resonated for me. Clarity started emerging for me around the relationships that mattered, and the opinions that didn’t. I was becoming aware of the ways in which I had allowed my personal boundaries to be violated.

I was looking at who I was with a beginner’s mind, and realizing that, in every moment, I could choose who I was becoming.

As can you.

Do, to Be.

I gradually spent more of my time actively doing, building pillow forts in the living room, getting my swimmers on at the waterpark and chasing my kids barefoot across the beach.

I spent time coaching, honing my craft and working towards deepening my presence and listening.

At work, I launched a vision with my team for a sweeping inclusion journey and learning intervention, co-opting leaders into shaping the delivery. I didn’t feel the pressure of unanswered questions anymore - we held space for experimenting and discovery, coaching leaders along the way.

In time, elegant solutions emerged from within the organization.

And my views on growth matured with me.

Growth was no longer obsessive, linear and exacting for me. Pass or fail. Pride or shame.

Growth became nurture. Progress. Tending. Tilling and culling.

And growth became the patience of germination.

The revolution of metamorphosis. The evolution of budding. The vividness of spring blooms and the intensity of pollinations. The endurance of migrations and the repose of hibernations.

purple-petaled flower — Cosmos blooms - Photo by KS KYUNG on Unsplash

Growth is organic and inevitable. Growth takes time.

Sometimes, growth is awkward, messy and involves letting go. Like old snake skin, nervous tadpole tails or larval soup. Acknowledging that frees us of the need to look good while learning.

As a leader, simply becoming aware and holding space for the maturing is an act of highest service.

For ourselves and for those around us.

What if the answers lie in the playing?

I do not know if I am an artist. Or a writer. Or a leader. Or a coach. I don’t know if holding tightly to any of those identities serves us any better than treading lightly.

What I do know is that I write most days. And step beyond fear or attachment to share my thoughts. I paint every chance I get. In the process, I sometimes paint something worth framing.

I lead the people entrusted to my care with my highest level of passion and consideration. Many of whom I share warm relationships with till today. And I coach, with permission, from a space of absolute faith in my clients’ deepest abilities to heal and transform themselves, to step into the brilliance of that bigger vision of their lives and to live their purpose joyfully.

And what about you?

What identities in your life could use some dissolving? Where are you holding back from taking action in the moment and discovering new possibilities through play? In what ways are you a passenger in your own life’s journey, policing your thoughts and actions for fear you might make a mistake?

And, so what if you did trip up?

The earth beneath my feet held no judgment that day about why I was wildly cavorting in the pouring rain, or any fear about my ability to get back on my feet if I slipped. And neither did my kids… we simply soaked in the heart connection and delight of that moment, forming a core memory that will bring us joy each time we pull it lovingly from the pages of time.