What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?
This is me in my happy place, standing on an ice floe in the Southern Ocean. It was day one of our expedition to Antarctica. The air was cold, but not unbearably so. Around us, ice, ocean and sky seemed to stretch forever. It was quiet. Calm. Almost unbelievably beautiful. And I felt very small. That was part of what made the moment so powerful.
Antarctica has a way of putting you in your place. The landscape is so vast that you realise just how tiny you are within it. Yet strangely, I don’t think I have ever felt more alive.
There was the sheer joy of being there. We had saved for years for the trip, and suddenly this place we had imagined for so long was right in front of us. There was awe. There was gratitude. There was also a deep sense of connection.
Antarctica may seem like a distant place at the bottom of the world, but it is connected to all of us. The Southern Ocean helps move currents, nutrients and oxygen around the planet. In that sense, Antarctica is almost like the heart of the global climate system, quietly circulating life through the deep arteries of the earth.
I found that extraordinary. Standing there, I realised that a place can be very far away and still matter to all of us. What happens there does not simply stay there.
And that made its fragility feel more personal. For all its size and strength, Antarctica did not feel indestructible. I found myself wondering what this place might look like for future generations. Will they experience the same beauty and wonder, or will they inherit something diminished?
Even the calmness felt fragile. The sea was still. The air was quiet. Yet we knew how quickly the weather could change and how different the whole landscape might feel within hours.
Perhaps that is part of what it means to feel truly alive. It is not just about feeling happy or excited. Sometimes it is about being fully present to everything at once: beauty and vulnerability, joy and concern, our own smallness and our connection to something much larger.
Standing there on the ice, I felt incredibly small. And perhaps because of that, I had rarely felt more alive.
What’s a moment in your life that made you feel truly alive?
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