What I Found While Getting Lost

For the better part of my life, I thought I knew it all. It feels a little weird to admit that, particularly given my relative abundance of random insecurities, but it’s true. It’s not like I walked around announcing to the world that I thought I knew everything, I just worked incredibly hard trying to convince myself that I had it all figured out. I am not sure of the exact genesis of this particularly charming personality trait – who doesn’t love to be around a know-it-all – but I actually think a lot of it developed as a result of some of my basic insecurities.

We all have various ways of compensating for our shortcomings. I chose an approach that was about as subtle as a driving a lifted monster truck with humongous tires. Growing up, I often felt as if my best was never good enough, so I chose to overcompensate by telling myself that I knew everything. Eventually I got to a point where I started actually believing it. Luckily, with age, a little maturity (very little) and some humility, I now realize how absurd my story had become.

The wonderful thing about humility is that it can make its presence felt in a variety of ways. It can come roaring into your life like a tornado and leave you with a worthless 3” black and white television, or with the patience of Ghandi, it can continually remind you of your hubris through subtle signs and patterns. You might not always see the signs, but in my case, I have found that humility will not stop until you do. Having a lifetime of “I know it all” under my belt, I was not particularly well-equipped to properly interpret the signs of foolish pride. After all, my life had been built upon a constant desire to be perfect, to have all the answers. What would it mean to admit that I didn’t know it all? What would I find if I really took a “good, hard look at myself”?

As a man, I have been blessed with an innate, incredibly accurate sense of direction. I would go so far as to say that you could drop me anywhere in the world, with neither a compass nor a map, and I would be back home by dinner. With groceries. At least that is what I have long believed about myself. I am sure there are many people, men and women, who can make that claim, but sadly I am not one of them.

Don’t get me wrong, it pains me to admit this. Only a couple of months ago, had Andrea questioned my sense of direction on any one of the countless times I had taken a wrong turn, I would have blamed everything on incompetent city planning. Oh, the power of denial.

The universe first attempted to make me aware of my inadequate geographic sensibilities while Andrea and I were working in Europe. One weekend, we rented a car and were planning on driving to Germany. Given that we were working in Switzerland and the countries shared a border,

I thought this seemed simple enough. I was confident I had it all planned out. Even though I felt like it was a waste of money, I even bought a map.

We hit the road and within 20 minutes we were lost. Switzerland is known for many things, one of them being their quaint open-air marketplaces with shopping and dining. For being a patient and neutral people, the Swiss get surprisingly angry at tourists who drive through their pedestrian-only marketplaces.

I am not sure exactly how it happened, but I made a wrong turn and the next thing I knew I was navigating through shopping booths and people sitting at tables eating their dinner. I would have put the car in reverse, but it was a European model that I had never heard of. Plus, the driver’s manual was written in German. My knowledge of the German language was limited to finding a bathroom and ordering a sandwich, but rather than admit to the rental agent that I couldn’t put the car in reverse, I just decided that this would be a “forward only” trip. As a result, I had to embarrassingly drive a complete loop through the entire marketplace in order to return to the street through which we had entered. If anyone ever tells you that the Swiss never get upset, they are lying. All it takes is driving a car through their restaurants.

My nerves finally began to calm once we found our way back to the highway. Once again, we were on our way. The road signs were difficult to make out,

but I was confident we were still on the road to Germany. Further along our journey, it began snowing. Snowing hard. I began worrying in earnest when we seemed to drive straight uphill for hours. By this point it was pitch black, snowing unbelievably hard and we were apparently trying to crest Mt. Kilimanjaro in a small sedan on our way to Munich.

I was down to my last frazzled nerve, when through what had to be divine intervention, a gas station miraculously appeared. We pulled in to find only one other car, which had a small group of – believe it or not – Texas-sweatshirt-wearing Americans. They seemed unfazed by the blizzard we were in, but that probably had more to do with their four wheel drive vehicle with chains than anything else. As a native Houstonian, Andrea happily went to ask for directions. I would have asked, but I was sure that Munich was only a few short miles down the road. Surprisingly, Munich was still hours away. We were in Austria.

You would think that an experience like this might make me begin to seriously reconsider my beliefs about my navigational savvy, but it didn’t. Nearly running over a few shocked Swiss diners could be chalked up to coincidence, but it is hard to deny the significance of missing your destination by an entire country. I should have learned my lesson and realized my limitations, but happy to be alive, I just blamed it on poorly made maps, horrific road planning and terrible road signs.

Undeterred by my obliviousness, humility began a more methodical approach to revealing my foolish pride. Years of forgetting where I have parked, getting lost running simple errands and having to “agree to disagree” with people (usually over things that I eventually find out I was wrong about) have finally started to sink in. As badly as I still feel like I need to know everything, I am finally getting to the place where I can comfortably say “I don’t know”.

There is something incredibly liberating, at least for me, in saying “I don’t know”. It takes a lot of work trying to convince yourself and others that you have it all figured out. Not to mention the fact that it is impossible. Admitting that I don’t have all the answers has given me the freedom to try to find out who I really am, and what I really know. It has become apparent that I know much less than I thought I did. And I am okay with that. That’s why we have Google, Wikipedia, and even Facebook. If I ever need to know something, I can quickly find it.

It took a while, but humility finally showed me the depth of my foolish pride. There are things I know, things that I am good at, and there are countless things that I don’t have a clue about. I used to worry about what people would think about me if they knew I was just as clueless as the next guy. The reality is that many of the relationships in my life have improved as I have started getting more and more comfortable with who I really am. No one has asked me for advice about driving through Europe, but the people I care about still seem to like me.

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