OPINION: Assumptions kill relationships.
It's
really rude to assume I know what someone else is thinking or feeling,
unless they’ve already told me what they’re thinking or feeling. Or
you.
I’d say go so far as to say that it’s disempowering them,
and it diminishes their right to be in charge of their own thoughts and
feelings.
And “But I know them well” is not actually a good
excuse. If I know someone well (for example, I’ve known my bride for
many decades), I may have a better guess, a less-ignorant assumption,
but I’m still taking away their agency, damaging their responsibility
for their own heart. I’ve made that mistake enough times to be gun-shy.
(She has paid dearly for my assumptions over the years.)
Assumptions damage and can kill relationships, sometimes slowly and painfully, other times quickly and messily.
I
watch folks pretty regularly make an assumption about someone else,
then relate to them, or discuss them, as if those uninformed (or
misinformed) assumptions were actually true. The assumptions prevent us
from learning what is actually true about that person, and in
conversation, they prejudice other people’s thoughts and expectations
about them.
I was part of a social experiment one time. Six or
eight of us were assigned to the task of figuring out the answer to a
pretty complex problem. But as we worked on it, the researcher stuck
labels (like “prideful” or “wise one” or “hair-brained”) on our
foreheads and instructed us to assume that this is who each person
really was as we worked on our problem.
The exercise continued
for another 10 or 15 minutes. The curious thing was that at the end of
the exercise, we all knew what the label on our foreheads said, and we
had all begun to live up to (or down to) those assumptions.
Lesson:
in a relationship, my assumptions about you will help to shape who you
are and how you relate to me and to others around you.
On the
other hand, if I’m making assumptions about a public figure I’ll never
have an actual relationship with, for example Taylor Swift or Donald
Trump, then there’s no actual relationship to damage. But our
assumptions still prevent us from understanding what’s actually true. If
I believe that Taylor Swift is this way, then that’s what I’ll see,
that’s what I’ll expect from her. More dangerously, that’s also going to
shape (to limit) how I pray for her. Same with Donald Trump, or any
other person I might pray for. (And I always recommend praying for both
thought-leaders and political leaders.)
Personally, I’m working
on (and I confess I have a long way to go) replacing assumptions with
possibilities. I’m trying to eliminate “They think this” with “I allow
for the possibility that they might think this,” and then ask enough
questions to find out. Provided I really want to (and deserve to) know
what they think. It seems to me that people made in the image of God are
deserving of that level of respect.
