The Deadlock
The frog was sitting on the floor in the doorway, blocking the path for the human to move inside the room. According to the frog though, the human was blocking their way out, creating a risk for safe movement.
The human has to go inside so that they can get their work done. The frog doesn’t know that. They randomly came into the house, looking for a safe space, found a tiny habitable corner and stayed there, unnoticed by the human for a good number of days. Now that the spot doesn’t feel comfortable anymore, they were on their way out (frogs are also people, according to me — all living beings are, hence the use of ‘they’).
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The frog just wanted to go out and relocate somewhere else. But they were facing a challenge they didn’t have to face while coming in. The only path they could see to get out was posing a threat to their life, beacuse of the presence of a huge, warm mammal in the middle of it. On the other hand, the human just wanted to go into their room and resume their work, but they were faced with a new threat that they hadn’t had to face when they went out of the room sometime earlier: the presence of a small, yet jumpy creature, that could jump on them and traumatize an already traumatized person with past experience of frogs jumping on them.
They don’t know that if they could communicate with each other, they’d just allow each other to pass by cordially and the experience would be considered as a happy interaction they’d had that day. They’d then just happily carry on with their intended activities, post the transit.
But they don’t know that yet. Hence, they stay in the doorway, motionless, each scared to take action, lest the attacker opposite to them might attack in a scary way. Their fear holds them still, frozen and deeply rooted to the spot. They are, hence, in a Deadlock. If one moves forward, the other may react. If one moves backward, the other may still react. Hence, the choice to stay motionless.
We don’t know what’s going to happen next. They might decide to take action when they tire themselves out, at some point. They can’t talk and resolve things, because one is a frog and the other is a human and they can’t speak each other’s language.
If only they could read each other’s thoughts, communicate their intentions or understand their fears. But they can’t, can they? So they wait, and we just let them be.
