In Heidegger’s essay on the thing, he mentions how the holding of a jug is present authentically, fully, only in the outpouring. The jug holds, of course—it receives and keeps something—and it does that in the void that is created by the walls. All of that is true. But it is only in the pouring that the holding becomes visible.

It is only in pouring that we know that something was being held. This is a switch from the usual idea of presence as positive and affirmative. For most of us, something is present only when it is physically there for us, or at least when there is a promise of it being physically being there for us. Let us take the easiest example of two lovers. For each of them to stay safe and comfortable in their relationship, they need each other physically present, or there should be a promise of this physical presence, which is how long-distance relations work.

But let us consider the flipside of this seemingly straightforward idea.

For some of us, for reasons unknown, it is sometimes the absence that counts as presence. Or, to put it more specifically, absence is as legitimate and true and real as presence. If presence weighs us down, absence weighs us down equally. This is to say that people are always present-in-presence-and-absence for us all the time, and when they demand that we remain ‘present’ and available, this demand appear ridiculous and oftentimes downright exhausting.

However, we are yet to consider the act of outpouring—communicating.

Since what we hold—or the fact that we can hold—is made visible in the outpouring, the communicating, it is crucial that we do it right. We can either talk or write. Talking comes with a set of advantages such as it being the overwhelmingly common form of communicating, to the extent that a lack of it are called speech disorders. However, speech is imprecise. We often do not have the luxury of waiting for the right word to arrive at our mouth. The words we choose to form meaning must be accurate if we are to communicate well. It is only in writing that we get at least a little closer to accurate outpouring. We can edit, cross out, substitute, look up a thesaurus and so on. It is only in writing that we honour our holding.