*This article is born out of the real situation below. This article is an experiment with AI to create structure and form around the situation I described to it by vocal narration. My inquiry, my thoughts and inspirations and associations. To do this I had to define roles, tone, purpose and context. I didn't write this article .. in the end - I gave AI the associations I had and the descriptions of my relational experience and pain in order to see if the AI could generate a structure which conveys the meaning of my experience and the relation to myself and others. It is oddly satisfying to see in writing this article .. I was the person on the other side starting with association and the AI was the other pole which brought clarity and useful meaning for me, as well as cathartic release and satisfaction of beginning with a purpose and inspiration to produce a result I am satisfied with. The article, in my opinion, incorporates my thinking and inquiry enough to leave questions open for further discussion and relation with myself and others. To me - this is the goal.
Simple and Innocent Beginnings
It began, as many lessons do, with something seemingly small.
A colleague opened a meeting and said, “Our next step is creating presentations.”
To anyone else, that might have sounded perfectly ordinary.
But for me, it landed like static in my mind — an old and familiar discomfort that I can’t quite shake.
Before I could stop myself, I interrupted:
“No, the next step isn’t creating presentations — we haven’t even defined the role yet.”
She looked puzzled. I corrected myself again.
And beneath that surface correction, something deeper stirred — something that had less to do with the project and more to do with years of lived experience, confusion, and emotional fatigue.
The Hidden Pain Beneath a Simple Sentence
What unsettled me wasn’t disagreement. It was the missing context.
My colleague had spoken in what I call an associative pattern — beginning from wherever her thought arose, without grounding it in the shared frame of where we stood or what we were doing.
For her, it made perfect sense. For me, it created chaos.
My mind immediately began searching for orientation:
“Presentations for what? When? Who’s the audience? How does this connect to what we said yesterday?”
Because I knew how to ask questions, I began asking — probing, clarifying, untangling.
But that skill, which in many contexts is useful, also became my burden.
It happened so often that I began to realize: I wasn’t just asking questions to clarify tasks.
I was constantly building bridges of understanding for other people —
translating their half-formed associations into coherent meaning,
helping them articulate what they themselves had not yet clarified.
And this pattern wasn’t only professional.
It was personal.
Becoming the Translator
In work, in friendships, even in intimate relationships, I often found myself playing the same role:
someone would come to me with a thought, a request, or a need,
and before we could act, I would need to decode what they really meant.
I’d listen deeply, ask questions, help them articulate what they were actually asking for —
and then, when it finally became clear, I would help them do it.
I thought I was being helpful — and in a way, I was.
But somewhere inside, another truth was growing louder:
I wasn’t relating to them.
I was relating to their confusion.
It began to feel as if I was acting like a translation machine —
turning emotional associations and unspoken context into structured meaning,
and spending enormous mental energy doing so.
And though I wanted to help, it started to feel lonely.
Because while I was helping others clarify their thoughts,
no one was helping me carry the weight of that effort.
The Double Bind
This created a kind of paradoxical pain.
If I refused to do the mental work — if I said, “I can’t help you until you clarify what you mean” —
it felt like I was breaking the relationship.
But if I kept doing it, I felt overextended, under-related, and unseen.
It’s a strange dilemma:
when your gift is clarity, you become indispensable — but also invisible.
Because the more capable you are at understanding others,
the less they may feel the need to understand you.
That’s the quiet ache behind my frustration.
It’s not simply about communication.
It’s about connection — about wanting to feel in relationship with someone,
not just in service to their understanding.
An Experiment: The Road and the Desert
If I step back and look at it like an experiment in a laboratory of human relation, I can see that what I long for is foundation.
A clear ground — a road that we can walk on together.
In this analogy, imagine we are standing in a vast desert.
Through it runs a single road, stretching straight toward a common horizon.
The road is our direction — our shared goal, the project, the intention that brought us together.
The desert around it is the open field of associations — beautiful, expansive, but unstructured.
When communication begins with clarity, we start on the road.
We know where we stand, and we can build upon that foundation, one layer at a time.
From there, creativity and exploration can unfold — we can step off to the side, explore the sand, collect new ideas — but we always know where the road is. We can always return.
But when someone begins in the middle of the desert — in pure association — without first grounding in context,
I must work to find the road.
I begin asking: Which direction are we facing? What’s the purpose of this conversation? Where did we begin?
Every time I lose sight of the road, I lose my sense of foundation.
And when I lose foundation, I lose the ability to build — not because there are no ideas,
but because there is no coherent direction to attach them to.
In such a landscape, we can travel far and still never arrive —
because our steps are guided by associations, not alignment.
We may end up on a new road altogether, in a different terrain —
a forest, an ocean, a mountain — each with its own beauty,
but none connected to the original purpose we set out with.
The challenge, then, is not about right or wrong roads.
It’s about remembering which foundation we’re building upon.
If we lose that foundation, the coherence of the work, the relation, or the organization eventually unravels —
and we must circle back to rebuild what was lost.
Even “thinking outside the box” requires knowing where the box is.
Innovation without context can be just another detour disguised as discovery.
The Broader Lens
When I step back, I see that this isn’t just about Poland or Canada, or culture at all.
It’s about polarity — between clarity and connection, structure and flow, individual agency and collective resonance.
In systems theory, both are essential:
too much structure, and life becomes rigid;
too much flow, and coherence dissolves.
Edward T. Hall called it high-context vs. low-context communication.
Daniel Kahneman spoke of associative vs. analytic thinking.
Otto Scharmer calls it presencing — sensing the field before acting.
All describe the same truth:
humans move between two ways of being —
one that builds direction and one that builds relation.
The Leader’s Paradox
As a leader, I’ve learned that we can’t escape this dance.
Clarity creates trust — but so does empathy.
Direction creates progress — but so does openness.
We need both: the road and the landscape, the map and the mystery.
Yet living in both worlds isn’t easy.
Especially for those of us who, out of love or habit, have become interpreters of others.
We carry the mental load of structuring the unstructured, of bringing coherence to what others leave unsaid.
And sometimes, we reach a point of asking:
“How much of that is my responsibility?”
“How do I stay in relation without carrying the full weight of understanding?”
“How do I protect my energy while remaining open to others?”
Returning to the Moment
When I look back at that simple moment — “Our next step is creating presentations” —
I see more than a trigger now.
I see a mirror.
It reflected not just my colleague’s associative style,
but my lifelong pattern of over-understanding others to feel safe and connected.
And as painful as it is, I see that both sides were right.
She was responding to what arose naturally in her —
and I was responding to my need for ground, direction, and coherence.
The tension between us wasn’t a conflict.
It was a polarity — two ways of knowing, both valid, both incomplete without the other.
Where I Stand Now
I still don’t have clear answers.
I still wrestle with when to help others clarify and when to step back.
I still feel the ache when I sense that I’m being related to for my clarity rather than for connection.
But I’ve begun to see this not as a flaw, but as a field of learning —
an invitation to hold both structure and softness,
to speak with clarity and listen with openness,
to create context without losing the human warmth that gives it meaning.
Maybe the task isn’t to stop translating others,
but to translate less from pain and more from choice.
Because clarity without connection is brittle.
Connection without clarity is blurred.
And perhaps the art of being human — and of leading —
is learning to live, love, and communicate in the space between.
In the end, the question isn’t how to fix others, or even how to fix myself.
It’s how to stay present enough to see when clarity becomes control,
and when empathy becomes self-erasure.
And in that awareness — somewhere between the road and the desert —
I find the faint but steady outline of what I’ve been searching for all along:
a form of communication that is not about being right,
but about being real.