As productive and caring citizens, we have all, at one time or another, given a piece of advice that we felt would surely lead to positive experiences for the person seeking advice. All we were at the time was a vessel for information. It was still up to the person how they would digest this information and what steps they would take following the conversation. In the neighborhood where I grew up, the Bronx, New York, which still to this day many would consider as the most confusing borough to navigate through in New York City, I would often encounter an aimlessly lost pedestrian attempting to locate some random block which he couldn't be farther away from. I would often stop and attempt to guide the person in the right direction as best I could, using landmarks, every conceivable hand gesture and even the occasional napkin map to describe how they were to arrive at their destination, only to watch the befuddled lost soul drive away and immediately make a wrong turn at the stop light two blocks away.

Now maybe my directions weren't the clearest but they were 100% accurate. How could they be so stupid as not to follow the course I laid out for them? (Of course this is what I thought at the time.) However I've come to realize that it's not that the information was incorrect or that the person intended to get lost, the error took place on the intake of the information. As the driver listened and tried to recount the steps in his head something was lost in translation. The second left after the BP gas station somehow turned into a right at the corner store and now he is once again off course.