Ask, don’t Assume
American actor and comedian Alan Alda once said “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in”. I have a feeling that a lot people make decisions based on their assumptions rather than on a true understanding of things or people. The English word “Assumption” comes from the Latin root that means “to take something for granted, or to suppose that something is true even though there is no clear evidence”.
Assumptions are personal ideas or thoughts that each of us hold to be true often with little or no external evidence. Studies suggest that assumptions are typically picked up from the culture in which we live. A lot of factors affect our assumptions, our background, our culture, our religion, our family, our friends, our society, our age…etc. Dealing with our assumptions is not an easy task because of the difficulty in identifying them and because they largely occur or develop at an unconscious level and dictate our choices.
One of the most difficult things for any of us to do is to identify our own assumptions and be able to constantly challenge them till we reach some kind of certainty
Someone once said “Beware of assumptions! Whatever you “assume” to be possible/ or impossible will have a tendency to become real for you.” It’s funny how our assumptions begin as speculations (thoughts that could be true) and as we continue to live with our assumptions we wish they were true and tend to believe them. One of the most difficult things for any of us to do is to identify our own assumptions and be able to constantly challenge them till we reach some kind of certainty where our understanding of a thing or a person is not just a proposition but is based on facts.
The danger of unchecked or unexamined assumptions is that they blind us from the reality and hook us to a false notion of people and things.
Whether we like it or not our assumptions have the power to dictate and destroy our relationships if they are unchecked. Daniel Kies says “Assumptions are the operating principle behind self-fulfilling prophecies. If we believe something to be true even though it is not tested or not even true, we often act as if it were true.” It is possible that most of our decisions and actions are often shaped by our assumptions that are deep within and are not based on truth or reality. In most research studies the researcher is asked to mention his or her assumptions before the study because acknowledging the assumptions will give more credibility to your study and will help the reader of your context.
To be honest it is always difficult to admit our assumptions or put them to test, because we are often afraid of finding out that our assumptions are wrong. I personally tend to think that as we grow older we get so used to our own assumptions that testing the validity of our assumptions becomes an issue of “ego” and pride. The danger of unchecked or unexamined assumptions is that they blind us from the reality and hook us to a false notion of people and things. Stephen Covey says “We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.”
The Bible has a classic example portraying the problem of assumption. Eli the priest assumed that Hannah was drunk since he saw her lips were moving but her voice was not heard (I Sam 1:9-15), notice that he not only assumed, but he acted on his assumptions and admonished her saying “How long will you keep on getting drunk?”. Well, the fact is that she was praying out of grief. Life would be much harmonious if all of us asked questions instead of just assuming things. I need to make a personal confession here, as a parent there are many times I assume things about our children and wrongly judge their behavior and sometimes I yell at them only to realize later that I was wrong. The next time you are tempted to make a conclusion based on your assumption, just hold your verdict, pause and ask the other person. You will never regret for asking, but may regret your whole life for assuming.
Life would be much harmonious if all of us asked questions instead of just assuming things…You will never regret for asking, but may regret your whole life for assuming.
– – Author: Rev. Francis Burgula – –
