Remembering What It Was Like

by Raymond Barranco, MSU Professor of Sociology

One of the most frustrating things I’ve ever tried to do as a parent is teach my kids how to ride a bike.

The difficult part isn’t holding onto the seat or jogging alongside them while they pedal. Those parts are easy.

The hard part comes a few seconds later.

Eventually, you have to let go.

At that point, you quickly realize you’ve run out of instructions.

You’ve already explained how to get on the bike. You’ve shown them how to pedal. You’ve told them to keep looking forward instead of at the front tire. But then comes the moment when they start wobbling and all you can think to say is:

“Just… balance!”

The problem, of course, is that they have no idea what that means.

So you say it again.

“Balance!”

Then louder.

“No, no… just BALANCE!”

To which your child is probably thinking, I’m trying!

The funny thing is that you’re not withholding some secret technique. You genuinely don’t know how to explain it anymore.

Somewhere along the way, balancing stopped being something you thought about and became something you simply did.

It’s like walking.

Or tying your shoes.

Or reading.

Or driving a car.

Once you’ve done those things long enough, they become automatic. In fact, we’ve turned it into a saying: “It’s like riding a bike.” We use that phrase to describe something so automatic that we never seem to lose it.

And that’s where the problem begins.

What was once difficult becomes obvious.

And once something feels obvious, we start to assume everyone else can see it too.

But they’re not standing where we’re standing.

Because we’ve forgotten what it was like to be beginners, we assume other people already see what we see. We skip steps. We use words that make perfect sense from where we sit but not from where they sit. Then, when they don’t understand, we repeat ourselves.

Usually louder.

A mechanic may tell us a repair is simple. A doctor may use a term they have heard thousands of times. A professor may jump from one idea to the next without explaining the connection.

None is necessarily trying to confuse anyone. The problem is that experience has erased the missing steps.

What feels like a straight line to the person explaining it may look like a series of unexplained leaps to the person listening. When that happens, the listener may feel talked down to, while the speaker concludes that the listener simply isn’t trying.

The longer we’ve known something, the easier it becomes to forget what the world looked like before we knew it.

Perhaps that’s one reason so many conversations in our society become frustrating. Experts assume everyone shares their background. Politicians assume everyone understands an issue from the same starting point. People with different life experiences end up talking past one another because each assumes the other is standing in the same place.

They’re not.

I wonder how many of our everyday frustrations come from this simple mistake.

How often do we think someone is being stubborn when they’re actually confused?

How often do we mistake unfamiliarity for laziness?

How often do we assume someone “should know better” simply because we’ve forgotten what it was like not to know?

The next time you find yourself repeating the same explanation over and over – or saying it just a little louder than before – pause for a moment.

Ask yourself one simple question:

What would I have needed to hear before I knew what I know now?

Maybe better communication isn’t about finding better words.

Maybe it begins by remembering what the world looked like from where we used to stand.