The Bridgekeeper

You hold the space between people. Someone has to translate the father to the daughter, keep the two colleagues who cannot speak to each other working, sense the conflict three days before it surfaces and quietly disarm it. You do that, in most rooms you enter, without being asked and without being noticed, because work done well in this domain is invisible by definition.

People love you for the peace around you, and for the feeling of being understood in your presence — you can restate someone's position back to them more clearly than they held it themselves.

The price is that you have become fluent in everyone's wanting except your own. Asked what you would like, you reach for the answer and find a calculation instead: what is available, what would be easiest for the others, what will keep things smooth. You have not lost your desires. You have simply not consulted them for so long that they have stopped announcing themselves. The question "what do I want" now produces static, and the static frightens you more than any conflict you have ever prevented.