I remember staring at the cursor blinking on my laptop screen.
The report had been pending for three days. Not because it was difficult. Not because I didn’t know what to write.
I had already written it twice in my head.
Still, I found myself arranging files, replying to unimportant messages, wiping the desk. Moving, but not moving forward.
I told myself I needed better clarity. A quieter moment. The right mood.
All gentle lies.
“He’ll join in five minutes,” the coordinator whispered, eyes fixed on her phone.
The room was already full. Forty chairs. Forty expectant faces. My slides were ready. My microphone was clipped. Five minutes stretched into ten. Someone in the front row adjusted his notebook. A woman near the aisle checked her watch. I stood there, holding a marker I didn’t need, rehearsing an opening I suddenly didn’t believe in.
I’ve done this hundreds of times. Boardrooms in different cities. Workshops with ambitious teams. Executive rooms where the air smells faintly of carpet cleaner and authority. Normally, I move easily into those spaces. I know how to carry the room. I know how to make people lean forward.
That morning, I couldn’t.
I was waiting outside a small clinic one afternoon, seated on one of those plastic chairs that never quite support your back. People came and went. A nurse called out names. Someone dropped a file. A child tugged at his mother’s sleeve. It was ordinary in every possible way.
And yet, in that quiet in-between space, I noticed how invisible we all were to one another.
We sat side by side, close enough to hear each other breathe, yet wrapped in our own private worlds. Phones in hand. Eyes lowered. Each carrying something unspoken. Worry. Fatigue. Hope. A long day ahead.
Strangers, all of us.