Sensemaking: The Skill We Weren’t Taught but Now Desperately Need

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A T2–T3 Orientation Essay

5–7 minutes

Orientation

This piece is for the moment when the old ways of navigating life stop working. The rules you followed, the milestones you aimed for, and the comparisons that once reassured you no longer provide direction. If you feel unmoored, behind, or unsure how to make decisions without a clear external map, you are not alone — and you are not failing. You may be developing a skill you were never previously required to build.

For much of modern life, most of us did not steer by an inner compass.

We steered by:

Expectations
Timelines
Roles
Cultural milestones
Social comparison

Am I on track?
Am I doing as well as others my age?
Does this look successful from the outside?

This worked — or seemed to — when the world felt stable. When institutions held. When career paths, family structures, and social norms created a shared roadmap.

But when the larger environment shifts, those borrowed maps begin to fail.

And many people discover something unsettling:

Without external direction, they don’t know how to decide.

This is not a personal flaw.
It is a developmental gap most of us were never asked to fill.

When the Map Breaks

During widespread change — economic, social, cultural, or personal — familiar signals disappear.

Career paths become unpredictable
Social roles blur
Institutions lose credibility
Collective narratives fracture

What once told you who to be and where you were headed grows unreliable.

The result is not just stress. It is disorientation.

You may notice:

Difficulty making decisions you once handled easily
A constant sense of second-guessing
Grasping for certainty from news, leaders, or ideologies
Comparing yourself even more, but feeling less reassured

It can feel like being dropped into unfamiliar terrain without a GPS.

This is where sensemaking becomes essential.

What Is Sensemaking?

Sensemaking is not a belief system.
It is not positive thinking.
It is not spiritual bypass.

At its core, sensemaking is:

The ability to interpret what is happening, update your understanding of reality, and choose your next steps based on that evolving understanding.

It helps you answer:

What is actually happening here?
What does this mean for my life now?
What is mine to respond to, and what is not?
What small step makes sense given current reality?

When the outer world is unstable, this becomes your primary navigation system.

Without it, people often:

Freeze
Follow the loudest voice
Cling to rigid certainty
Dissociate into distraction
Drift without direction

With it, people can move slowly, imperfectly, but intentionally.

Why Many Adults Feel Lost Right Now

If you relied on social cues and shared timelines for decades, your internal navigation system may feel weak — not because you lack intelligence or depth, but because the skill was never required.

It’s like being driven everywhere your whole life and suddenly being handed the steering wheel in heavy weather.

Of course it feels overwhelming.

Naming this matters:

You are not failing at life. You are learning how to steer.

And learning any complex skill later in life comes with awkwardness, doubt, and false starts.

That is part of the process, not proof you are incapable.

How Sensemaking Develops (Even Later in Life)

Sensemaking isn’t one ability. It’s the integration of several ways of knowing.

1. Experience as Data

Your past is not just a story — it is information.

You begin to ask:

When in my life did I feel most alive or most drained?
What patterns repeat in my relationships, work, or choices?
What environments helped me grow? Which shrank me?

Instead of copying others’ paths, you start noticing your own patterns.

That builds a personal map.

2. A Scientific Attitude Toward Your Life

This doesn’t require formal science — just curiosity and flexibility.

You try small changes:

Adjust your schedule
Speak a boundary
Reduce an obligation
Try a different approach

Then you observe:
What happened?
How did my body respond?
Did this bring more strain or more steadiness?

You form hypotheses, test them gently, and update your understanding.

This replaces rigid certainty with adaptive learning.

3. Rebuilding Intuition

Intuition here isn’t mystical prediction. It’s your system’s internal feedback.

It shows up as:

A sense of expansion or contraction
Relief vs tightness
Energy vs depletion
Calm vs agitation

If you’ve lived by external expectations for years, these signals may be faint. But they can be relearned.

Pausing to ask, “How does this actually feel in my body?” is a core sensemaking practice.

4. Using Social Input Differently

Other people still matter. Community still matters.

But instead of asking,
“What should I want based on them?”

You begin asking,
“What can I learn from their experience — and does it fit my reality?”

Others become reference points, not authorities.

This shifts you from imitation to discernment.

Why This Skill Is Now Essential

In stable times, strong sensemaking is helpful.

In unstable times, it is protective.

It reduces the risk of:

Blindly following harmful certainty
Making panic-driven decisions
Staying stuck because no external authority gives permission
Losing yourself in comparison

And it increases:

Psychological resilience
Personal agency
Thoughtful pacing of change
The ability to stay oriented even when outcomes are unclear

You don’t need perfect clarity.
You need enough orientation to take the next coherent step.

If You Feel Behind

It can feel humiliating to realize you don’t know how to navigate without external direction.

But this is not regression. It is maturation.

You are shifting from:
“Tell me who to be.”
to
“Let me understand reality and choose consciously.”

That transition is disorienting — and deeply human.

You are not lost because you are incapable.
You are disoriented because the old map stopped working.

Learning to make sense of your own life in real time may be one of the most important skills you develop — not just for surviving change, but for living with greater honesty and coherence than borrowed direction ever allowed.

Gentle Crosslinks (Optional Further Reading)

You may also resonate with:

These pieces explore related phases of reorientation and may offer additional grounding as you develop your own way of navigating an evolving world.

About the author

Gerry explores themes of change, emotional awareness, and inner coherence through reflective writing. His work is shaped by lived experience during times of transition and is offered as an invitation to pause, notice, and reflect.

If you’re curious about the broader personal and spiritual context behind these reflections, you can read a longer note here.

Sensemaking: The Skill We Weren’t Taught but Now Desperately Need

Orientation

When the Map Breaks

What Is Sensemaking?

Why Many Adults Feel Lost Right Now