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Misunderstanding and anxiety are two related experiences that the anthropologist often encounters during fieldwork. They take root in the interactional hiatus of the encounter: when the anthropologist meets the Other about whom (s)he does not know much. The methodological tools used by the anthropologist (such as observing, participating and communicating) are potential occasions for misunderstanding and anxiety. Thus, on the field, the anthropologist becomes vulnerable to communicational and emotional issues. However, is this “fragile” epistemological condition really “unfortunate”? I question that by using excerpts from my own ethnographic fieldwork. Indeed, if misunderstanding and anxiety can be problematic, they can also play an important practical role for the researcher. They allow to be more conscious of interactional details and subtleties of social life by sharpening one’s cognitive and affective abilities, by educating one’s attention and by extending the effort of concentration. Hence, a confused and queasy anthropologist must be extremely attentive to the situation in which (s)he is stuck in order to understand and reduce the anxiety that it entails.