You Can Have a Capacity and Still Not Be Able to Reach It
By Diane E. McDowell
There are things you know you have.
Clarity.
Curiosity.
Perspective.
Judgment.
Your own voice.
You've used them before. You can point to moments when they were readily available.
And then there are other moments when something changes.
You still know you're capable of thinking clearly, but the clarity isn't coming as easily.
The question you would normally ask doesn't occur to you.
You have perspective, but right now you can only see the conversation from one angle.
You know what you think, but the words that would usually let you say it aren't quite there.
Nothing necessarily happened to the capacity itself.
What changed was your access to it.
Capacity and Access Are Not the Same Thing
I use two words to make this distinction.
Capacity is what you have.
Access is what you can reach and use in a particular moment.
When I say something is available, I simply mean you can reach and use it in that moment.
Capacity and Access are easy to confuse because when something is available, there's little reason to separate them.
If I can reach my judgment, I use it.
If curiosity is available, I ask the question.
If I'm connected to my own perspective, I speak from it.
The distinction becomes easier to see when something I know I have becomes harder to reach.
That's when the conclusions can change.
Maybe I'm not as clear as I thought, or I don't know what I want.
Maybe I'm not good at this.
Maybe this is just who I am.
But those conclusions assume that what was available in one moment tells us everything about what exists.
It doesn't.
Think of It Like a Shelf
Imagine a shelf holding things that already belong to you: clarity, curiosity, perspective, judgment, your voice.
When the shelf is within reach, you don't spend much time thinking about it. You simply take what you need.
Move that same shelf higher.
Everything is still there.
The contents haven't changed.
What changed is whether you can reach them as easily from where you're standing.
We Often Judge Ourselves by What Was Available
This matters because we tend to evaluate ourselves from the outside.
We look at what we said and what we didn't say, the decision we made, the question we never asked, how long we kept explaining, what we understood only later.
Then we use the visible outcome as evidence about ourselves.
But an outcome tells you what was available in that moment. It doesn't tell you everything you have.
Someone can have excellent judgment and have difficulty reaching it in a particular conversation.
A deeply curious person can find that curiosity isn't readily available with one particular person.
Someone who knows how to listen can still notice their attention moving toward what they're going to say next.
You can know what you think and temporarily lose contact with the words that would let you say it simply.
The capacity is real.
So is the change in Access.
We don't have to deny either one.
More Skill Doesn't Always Solve the Problem
When something doesn't go the way we wanted, it's natural to assume we need more skill.
Sometimes we do.
There are things we haven't learned yet. There are situations for which we genuinely aren't prepared.
But sometimes the skill is already there.
You've used it before.
You may even use it exceptionally well under conditions that look more demanding from the outside.
That's when a different question becomes useful.
Not:
Do I have this capacity?
But:
Under what conditions can I reach it?
One question asks whether something exists.
The other asks what happens to its availability.
Access Isn't a Measure of Your Best Version
Once we notice that Access changes, it would be easy to turn full Access into another standard.
Clear is good. So are patient, curious, and articulate.
So the moments when those things are readily available must represent the good version of you.
That's not what I mean.
Access isn't a score.
It isn't a way of dividing yourself into the version you should be and the version you shouldn't.
It's a way of noticing what is available.
Sometimes certainty remains available while curiosity becomes harder to reach.
Sometimes language is readily available while perspective isn't.
Sometimes you can reach your ability to solve the problem but not your ability to stay with a question that doesn't have an immediate answer.
The point isn't to make every capacity equally available all the time.
It's to recognize that having something and being able to reach it are not the same thing.
The Distinction Changes the Question
Without this distinction, a difficult moment can become a verdict very quickly.
Why am I like this?
Why can't I communicate?
Why am I so indecisive?
Why do I always do this?
Those questions treat the moment as proof.
Access gives us another place to look.
What do I know I have that became harder to reach here?
Not because the answer excuses what happened.
Not because every difficult response can be explained by Access.
And not because capacity never needs to be developed.
But because sometimes we're trying to build something that's already there.
The more useful thing to understand is what changed between having it and being able to reach it.
What You Have Is Not Always What You Can Reach
The same is true of perspective, judgment, curiosity, and a voice: any of them can be there and still be hard to reach in a particular moment.
Those moments don't tell us everything about the person.
They tell us something about what was available.
Capacity is what you have.
Access is what you can reach.
Sometimes the two feel almost indistinguishable.
Sometimes the distance between them explains a great deal.
© 2026 Diane E. McDowell. All rights reserved.