THE DANGER OF MAKING ASSUMPTIONS

I know, sounds like a weird posting...give it a chance. I learned some interesting things about the word assume (or assumptions). Did you know former Vice President Al Gore asked the United States Congress to come up with a better understanding of the word, assume? After much deliberation Congress voted in a definition of the word, assumption, it read: 'to make a premature judgement on a matter without verification or adequate fact finding.' What is crazy is that Congress voted on this definition without doing any research on the word...they just voted! How funny is that? And we wonder why people do not trust elected legislators!!

If you were to do any research on the word assume you would find other words like: to seize, to take up, acquire wrongly, pretend, feign, simulate, put on, take for granted, justify and, falsely or wrongly hold onto. Given these related ideas about assumptions, why would anyone ever assume something about someone or something? After thinking about all of this (after all, I did not want to make any assumptions) I have come to the conclusion that making assumptions is tied in some way to arrogance. To assume something a person might think to themselves, "I know better". Once a person has self declared themselves an expert on any given topic, this person is not open to new information. If this 'entry level' form of arrogance is given any breathing room it will suffocate or choke out any new ideas that come into view. A second reason people make assumptions is because of laziness. People simply do not want to do the hard work of research so they blow off hard work. A third reason people make assumptions is related to laziness, people make hasty assumptions because they are impatient. And finally, people make assumptions because they are not only ignorant, they are comfortable with living in shallow back waters of life (only to drown there). Not doing diligent research (like on a perspective spouse, job or significant purchase) will someday catch up with these types of lazy people and bite them big time on the back side. My bottom line on making assumptions---DON'T MAKE 'EM.