Field Notes on Being Human™: Difficult, Not Impossible: Rethinking Obstacles in Conflict and in Life

We talk about obstacles like they’re boulders.
Fixed. Immovable. Permanent.

But what if obstacles aren’t fixed at all?
What if they’re simply… difficult?

That one small shift changes everything: in mediation, in leadership, in being human.

The Myth of the Impassable Wall

When people enter mediation, they often believe the problem can’t be solved.
“He’ll never change.”
“She’ll never apologize.”
“They’ll never see my side.”

It’s the same language we use when we’ve hit emotional concrete in our own lives, those places where we whisper, This is just how it is.

But rarely are obstacles truly impossible. More often, they’re just uncomfortable, layered, or stubborn.
And if we can learn to sit inside difficult without labeling it impossible, we start to see movement where before there was only stone.

From Stuck to Slow

Mediators know that “stuck” is rarely literal.
It’s a nervous system on overload. It’s grief pretending to be anger. It’s fatigue that’s lost its name.

When we stop treating the stuck place as a wall and start treating it as a weather pattern, the posture changes.
We stop pushing.
We start noticing.
And noticing is what opens the first crack of possibility.

The Human Parallel

Outside the mediation room, I fall into the same trap.
I label things impossible because difficult feels like failure.

Healing from trauma? Difficult.
Setting boundaries? Difficult.
Starting again? Difficult.
None of it impossible.

The trick is staying long enough with “difficult” to let it teach you what it’s made of (fear, history, fatigue, longing) and then responding to that instead of to the wall.

The Mediator’s Lesson

In mediation, I’ve learned that obstacles soften when you stop arguing with them.
When you shift from “this can’t move” to “this hasn’t moved yet,” the energy changes.

That’s the work:

• Name the obstacle honestly.

• Stop fighting it like it’s a villain.

• Invite it to teach you what it needs to ease.

Sometimes that’s time.
Sometimes it’s language.
Sometimes it’s permission to stop pretending it’s easy.

Final Thought

Obstacles aren’t monuments to what can’t be done. They’re markers of what asks for more from us: more patience, more clarity, more faith.

Whether in mediation or in your own becoming, the work isn’t to erase difficulty. It’s to reframe it.

Because once we see an obstacle as difficult rather than impossible, we remember we’re still capable of movement.
And movement, however slow, is the quiet definition of hope.

Field Notes on Being Human™ is a creative and educational series by Dr. Tam Alexander.