Let’s get tangled up. And then untangle ourselves. Again and again.

Everything is obvious for everyone but me.

The longer I live, the less I believe that I am unique in experiencing this persistent sentiment.

I can’t begin to tell you about how I have spent my life negotiating situations that have left me feeling absolutely stupid. It always seems as though the world moves in one direction—a traffic pattern lockstep that leaves little patience for the tentative and wavering participants who hold things up for even a split second. No one seems to want to break from their groove and pull over to ask if someone might be in need of a basic navigation point or two. At least that’s the impression I get when I stand back and watch all those cars whiz by.

Somewhere before, I know that I have written about my favorite French expression, “C’est pas évident.” It pretty much translates as a confession revealing that everything we do in life must first be learned. No one heads out into their daily conquest without applying days upon days of life learning and error .

To put it in more concrete terms:

Yesterday, in the name of promoting some situational awareness, I invited a fairly new co-worker to shadow me along as I went about my morning routine in my workspace. When you’re new to a place, you have not yet learned the ins and outs of achieving even the smallest victories, and I am always amazed at how seldom I will come across seasoned veterans who actually look to new arrivals and see themselves just a few months earlier. More often than not, most people don’t stop what they’re doing to hand out copies of their coveted “Idiot’s Guide To Living Life Around Here” instruction booklet.

By virtue of working in a career field that sees me moving every couple of years, the experience of being the New Kid is a role that must constantly be endured. And as much as my intellectual side understands that my “just checked in” status can’t possibly know where the nearest bathroom is (and I really have to pee), I still berate myself for not operating at full veteran’s capacity as soon as I step aboard my new command.

On a similar yet converse token, I get so annoyed when I’m poking around for some inexplicably elusive requirement, only to come upon someone who can easily tease out the solution when I bring it up within earshot. “Oh, you’re looking for X? You just go behind the door with no sign and a combination lock, walk past the receptionist who will ignore you, and snake your way around to the back of the room until you come upon a lady with Barbie Dolls on her desk. If she’s actually at her desk, she will help you.”

Of course. And how the hell was I supposed to figure that out on my own?

So yeah, at the ripe old age of 36, I have spent most of my life feeling woefully ineffectual for not knowing how to accomplish basic things on my own. Things like getting a printer connected to the correct LAN, finding a person’s name in a massive work e-mail directory (because it has not been uniformly categorized), figuring out how to get into a building because the parking lot is so damn big and nothing is clearly signposted…I could keep going on but it’s Friday and I gave up drinking for Lent. I don’t need to relive my week in this manner. I’ll just say that on countless occasions, I have found myself standing in place and thinking, “Is it just me? Am I just not getting this?”

Hell no.

How about a new approach to learning, young grasshopper?

Instead I’ll argue the obvious, and say that communication is the life and death of all of our successes. We all dream for the moment that another human being can sense that we are in extremis, and step up to take us along and show us the best way out of the woods. This really doesn’t seem to happen nearly as often as any of us would like.

And at the same time, I’d also offer up that the act of communication is a two way street. It is just as incumbent on ourselves, we who are lost and pitching a two-year-old’s hissy fit on the inside, to open our mouths and admit that we’re operating in the dark.

No one likes to put anyone else out, and no one wants to be that single car that is dangling in short-tempered traffic on a Northern Virginia highway at rush hour. But we’ve all been there, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s our turn to land in the hot seat of cluelessness again. It is during these times when I am yelling, “GO!” from inside my car that I really should be telling myself to have a little more patience with the lost and seemingly aimless person ahead of me.

I had a lot of fun showing my co-worker around the building today. I got to give her the tour that I would have killed to receive when I first checked in to this job. Sure, in playing tour guide I still got us a little bit turned around as I lost my bearings, but she didn’t mind in the slightest. Not only was she appreciative, but I too was happy that for once, I remembered to take myself out of my own shoes and share some of my hard-earned inside knowledge with another.

No one, after all, should go through life without knowing where the nearest restroom is located.