Deep Reflection: The Impossible and the Intimate | On Speech, Presence and Connection #WritingCulture
What happens in that hospital waiting room when two strangers' eyes meet and words fail, yet something profound is communicated?
🖋️ The rain fell steadily outside the hospital window that morning. I hadn't planned to be there few ever do but circumstances had brought me to that sterile waiting room with its low hum of anxiety and hope intermingled. It was there, between the outdated magazines and the soft mechanical beeping from beyond the doors, that I witnessed something that would linger with me for weeks.
The Impossible Moment
What do we mean when we say "impossible"?
Not the fantastical realms of science fiction, nor the merely improbable outcomes we calculate against. I'm speaking of that quiet, persistent category of human experience where meaning seems just out of reach. A situation we cannot fix. A truth we cannot say. A moment we cannot resolve.
I witnessed this impossibility in that hospital waiting room. Two strangers, seated across from one another, momentarily looked up and their eyes met. One had clearly been crying; the other bore the weight of similar experience in the lines around their eyes. No words passed between them what could be said, after all? Yet something traveled across that space more truthful than any platitude or greeting card wisdom.
The impossible was acknowledged without being resolved.
The Theoretical Escape
Sometimes, we answer this impossibility with theory complex maps of the psyche, elaborate diagrams of language as limitation, the self as merely patterns in structures. We cite Lacan and discuss the mirror stage, we invoke Derrida and talk of différance. The frameworks multiply: poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, linguistic determinism.
In this view, speech is always already failing, an echo bouncing around a void. We take comfort in knowing that our inability to fully express ourselves isn't personal failure but ontological condition. "Of course we can't adequately speak our truth," we tell ourselves, "language itself is a system of absence."
The theory isn't wrong. But I wonder if it sometimes offers too convenient an exit.
The Terror of Intimacy
What if the deeper crisis isn't the impossibility of expression, but the intimacy it demands?
Our explanations and theories often buffer us against the terror of being truly seen. We speak of "the subject" rather than ourselves. We reference universal conditions rather than personal choices. We hide behind academic jargon and abstract pronouns.
To speak is to step out of hiding. Not as an abstract subject, but as a breathing, choosing being. A presence that cannot be diagrammed, a voice that breaks through theory into the vulnerable space of being with others.
I remember once trying to explain a profound disappointment to a friend. I had all the psychological vocabulary at hand attachment patterns, emotional regulation, projective identification. But when the moment came, those concepts dissolved into inadequacy. What remained was simply my voice, breaking over the words, "I really thought it would be different this time."
Theory couldn't carry the weight of that moment. Only presence could.
The Ethics of Speech
Not all speech conceals. Some speech offers. Not all language defers meaning. Some words are not signs of absence, but anchors of attention.
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose," Viktor Frankl reminded us from the depths of experiences most of us cannot fathom.
Frankl's words resonate because they remind us: the human being is not only a symptom to interpret but a force of meaning making. Not just a structure of emptiness but a will to presence. He spoke not from theory but from the lived reality of concentration camps, where the impossible pressed in from all sides, yet dignity somehow remained.
And perhaps this is where our understanding of impossibility must be redefined. Not as failure but as invitation. To stand inside the unresolved without retreat. To speak, even when silence tempts us with safety.
A Different Kind of Presence
I think of the patients I've observed in my years working adjacent to healthcare settings. How they navigate news that cannot be integrated, diagnoses that defy immediate comprehension. The frameworks they build aren't always rational, but they are deeply human.
"I need to be strong for my family," one woman told me, after receiving news that would have justified any collapse. Her eyes were clear, her voice steady. Not because she was in denial, but because she was choosing how to carry the impossible.
This wasn't repression or avoidance. It was dignity embodied.
So let us rethink mindful speech, not as linguistic hygiene, nor as psychoanalytic self exposure, but as ethical action. Each word, a gesture of being with. Each silence, a mirror of responsibility. Each conversation, a fragile architecture where truth and care may briefly coexist.
The Body's Wisdom
Consider how your body feels when speaking truth chest tightening, voice trembling, the subtle warmth rising to your face. These aren't failures of composure but reminders of what's at stake: our shared vulnerability, the gravity of genuine connection.
I've been in boardrooms where someone finally broke through layers of corporate jargon to say what everyone felt but couldn't articulate. The physical shift in the room was palpable bodies relaxing, breath deepening, as if everyone had been holding themselves slightly away from reality until that moment.
The body knows when truth appears. It responds with relief, even when the truth itself is difficult.
Being With the Impossible
To speak, then, is not to resolve the impossible. It is to remain beside it.
Not as theorists. Not as analysts. But as humans.
In that hospital waiting room, those two strangers never exchanged words. But for a moment, their gazes held acknowledgment of something shared the fragility of life, the inadequacy of words, the strange comfort of recognizing another person inside the same impossible moment.
Perhaps that recognition itself is what we're really seeking when we speak. Not perfect communication, not the end of all misunderstanding, but the grace of being witnessed in our attempts to make meaning.
A Gentle Invitation
What if speech is not simply the unveiling of our gaps but the gift of our gravity?
Not a symptom to decode but a presence to receive.
Not the failure of perfect communication but the echo of our dignity.
We are more than what cannot be said. We are the saying itself, the attempt, the reaching across spaces of difference toward connection. Even when especially when we cannot fully bridge the distance.
The next time words fail you, consider that failure not as proof of some fundamental lack, but as evidence of your humanity reaching toward something genuine. Let the impossibility become an invitation to presence rather than a retreat into theory.
And when you witness someone else struggling for words, remember what you know from your own experience: they are not performing a linguistic function or enacting a psychological pattern. They are offering you the gift of their presence, however imperfect, however human.
That offering deserves nothing less than our own presence in return.
—#WritingCulture— by Ellis Zeitmann for ThinkZeit
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