“Ask, Don’t Assume”

“Ask, Don’t Assume”: this has become one of my favorite mantras since first seeing this quote at a friend’s house in February. 

Over the past five or six years my awareness with respect to assumptions has probably been one of the greatest shifts in my worldview and growth. I have found myself in personal situations as well as professional environments which have not only totally deconstructed and turned on its head my upbringing and habit of assuming, but also and maybe even more importantly made it glaringly clear to me how much, how often, how pervasively we assume. 

I am a scientist: in some realms of my life, assumptions are my daily bread and are necessary. But I have come to realize that apart from maths and the hard sciences, where indeed assumptions are often the foundation (and yet still need to be made with extreme caution and analyzed carefully!), when it comes to human relations and most aspects of life, assumptions are not just tricky: assumptions can be straight out dangerous and harmful. Assumptions about people, feelings, situations can sometimes be necessary or inevitable. But overall I’m realizing that assumptions about persons, emotions, situations are more like shields or walls, and they can even turn into swords or daggers or rocks. 

I still find myself making assumptions, too. A week ago, in my last session with my counselor, I was wrapping up a situation that had weighed on my mind and heart and soul for along while, and I found myself saying, “… but the shame I felt in all that is still hard to overcome sometimes and that’s something that he didn’t feel, even if it was confusing and difficult for him, too, at least he didn’t feel the shame…” And then I stopped almost in mid-sentence: before my counselor had even said anything, I caught myself and corrected myself: “Actually,” I found myself reflecting, “I don’t really know that and cannot know it unless I ask him. He might have felt shame, too. I’m only assuming he didn’t and I cannot really know”. 

In that moment I saw and felt how useful therapy has been for me because, together with many readings and conversations with people who are open-minded and non-judgmental, I have truly learned to ask and listen carefully instead of assuming, to be more open-minded, to hold the doubt, and also to be much more aware of the moments when I don’t, when I slip back into the old, ingrained habit of making assumptions without enough information.