Anita, thank you for taking the time to think through all of this and for trying to understand the differences in how we communicate. I find it helpful.

I want to share something honestly and from the heart. When you describe my way of speaking as coming from a rigid childhood or inner chaos, I feel reduced by that. The explanation feels like a cage. It’s not that you’re wrong, it’s that it turns my way of communicating into a psychological diagnosis. And that’s actually part of what I meant earlier about how language can trap us and others without us noticing.

You say you speak concretely, and I believe that’s how it feels from the inside. However from the outside, I see you doing something quite abstract as well… creating theories about me, interpreting motives, building symbolic stories about childhood. That’s not a criticism; I actually relate to those stories, though confused when you say you don’t understand abstract thought… Perhaps a reminder that we’re both shaped by the languages we grew up inside, and we both sometimes mistake our own style for the ‘real’ one.”

I don’t want either of us to give up our way of speaking and every style (language) has limits, and can create misunderstandings, even cages, we don’t always notice. In a way, this whole exchange is exactly what I meant by the “prison house of language”: how words can open us and confine us and others sometimes.

I appreciate your effort to meet me, and I see that we’re both trying to do that without losing our own way of expressing things and losing ourselves. In that light perhaps I should add that don’t speak abstractly to be clever or evasive. It’s simply how I make sense of the world and how I stay connected to myself. It’s the way I avoid collapsing into someone else’s frame, and it protects parts of me that were never clearly mirrored for me.

I actually feel something similar in your writing… there’s a depth of feeling in what you write that goes beyond the concrete…

Your phrase “the non‑duality of human early reactions” feels abstract and poetic to me, even though you experience it as concrete. I suspect that difference in how we use language is where we keep missing each other.

I feel a flush of foolishness for starting the topic, thinking I could use the very thing I’m questioning to somehow step outside it and see it clearly. It’s like trying to use a flashlight to understand darkness, only to realize the light itself creates the boundary. So I’m going to step back with words wiser than mine:

Trying to catch the wind
with a wicker basket
that’s the work of cleverness.

Turning words on words
to question words
that’s the labor of the mind.

The wise just smile.

When speech reaches its edge,
silence begins.

When meaning is squeezed,
it dries.
When it’s left alone,
it moves on its own.

Step back.
Empty the hands.
Loosen the tongue.

A soft breath
is enough.
An open space
needs no filling.

Hi Anita,

Please don’t feel bad. The “reduction” I felt wasn’t a wound you inflicted; it was a perfect example of the very “prison” we are talking about, how labels, even well-intentioned ones, can feel like walls. I shared that I felt “reduced” in the moment because I’ve found that when I hide those feelings to avoid conflict, they become harder to release. I thought you deserved the honesty of the experience rather than my silence. I felt that as growth.

When you say, “Maybe it’s better that we don’t communicate further,” I see the Prison House of Language in real-time. It’s that point where the frustration of words failing leads us to believe that silence is the only way to stay safe. But we aren’t missing each other because we are failing; we are missing each other because language is a blunt tool. If we stop talking to “do no harm,” the walls just stay where they are.

I’m not hurt; I’m just noticing the boundaries of the wicker basket. I’ll be honest: my poem was an exit from the topic. I felt a sense of failure in starting it, realizing I was trying to use the very thing I was questioning to somehow step outside of it. It felt like a ‘clever’ labor of the mind that was only creating more walls, so the poem was my way of letting go of that specific effort and stepping back into a simpler space. I still plan to exit the topic, but see in context it was badly done.

You asked how I see your “concrete” language as abstract. It’s interesting to me that even the word “concrete” is actually a very powerful abstraction. We take a material from the physical world, something hardened and solid and use it as a metaphor to describe a way of thinking and seeing the world. That isn’t wrong, just something to notice so we don’t get trapped. When is it that our language creates or limits the experience of how we see the world?

When you hold onto a construct like “the non-duality of human early reactions” as a concrete fact, it can ironically become a prison. It blends psychology, philosophy and perhaps even spiritualty into a fixed lens that suggests we are all “reactors” following the same rules. That creates a “fixed” version of oneself and others that assumes a predictable result of the past, rather than a person here in the present.

When “Do No Harm” or “Non-Duality” become fixed rules, they dictate our reality (Silence). I’d much rather we “do harm” by accidentally bumping into each other and then talking through it, than “do right” by never speaking again.

The ‘green grass’ isn’t a place where no one ever trips; it’s just a place where there’s enough room to get back up.

Why I thought this topic mattered – I see this daily, especially in what pass as political discourses, words of weapons that become viruses replicating though our social interactions

Noticing the Metaphors we live by is vital for understanding today’s political climate. Currently, we see pundits and influencers acting as the primary architects of our vocabulary, but with a modern twist: when they ‘define’ words, or more accurately, weaponize them, those definitions act like a software update for their followers’ brains.

Once that linguistic update is installed, the ‘metaphor lives them.’ If the word ‘Opposition’ is redefined as ‘Existential Threat,’ the ‘Argument as War’ framework becomes the only operating system available. At that point, people are no longer capable of seeing a differing perspective as a valid counterpoint; they can only perceive it as an ‘attack’ to be neutralized.

If we want to fix our discourse, we have to stop being the passive hardware for these polarizing updates. We need to reclaim our agency and move from ‘Politics as a Zero-Sum Game’ to ‘Politics as a Civic Workshop,’ where we question the metaphors before they dictate our reactions.

Well said Alessa and Anita (you must have some phone skills, my thumbs are to clumsy

The intention really was to encourage the question so we might notice, when were using words and when words are using us. Based on my own experience, observations and readings… words use us more then we use words.