Most people tend to think that to assume something is, by definition, wrong or at least ill-advised. But think about it: we all assume things all the time, several or even several hundred or perhaps thousands of times every day. When you speak or write to someone, you assume he/she will know the meaning of at least most of the words you use and so will understand what you mean (more on that in a moment). When you hear the telephone ring, you assume you should answer it (or not, depending on how many telemarketing calls you get!). When you mention to your neighbor that it’s cold or warm today, you assume he/she is using the same relative scale as you are, and so will understand approximately how warm or cold you feel.
But here’s where it starts to come unglued. If someone in Antarctica is on the phone to someone in Miami and makes the same statement, there may or may not be correct communication, for rather obvious reasons (I’m assuming you can see that!). If an American tells a Canadian that he wants a quart of milk, depending on his age the Canadian may not have any idea what he means, or if he does he may envision a different measure. That’s because some years ago Canada converted to the metric system and we now use liters for liquid measure. However, older Canadians will remember quarts but will remember them as having 40 ounces, whereas the American quart is 32 ounces (even that is not exactly correct because the size of an ounce was slightly different as well). Before going metric, Canada was on the British Imperial measurement system which had 40 ounces to the quart. However, the American is likely to assume that everyone knows what a quart is.
My former wife had an aunt who used to drive her around the bend with assumptions. This aunt was a farm wife who was a great cook and baker, and my wife would often ask for the recipe for something we had just enjoyed. But when she got home and read the recipe, she would almost always see a statement something like this: “… then add flour until it looks right.†The assumption here of course is that the aunt assumes everyone (at least everyone who could cook or bake) would know what “right†means in this context!
When you analyze the issue, in some ways it’s really rather surprising that we communicate so well so much of the time. Consider the process: I have a thought in my mind that I want to communicate to you (exactly what I am doing right now). So I put that thought into words, and I select, and then organize, those words according to my education, background, experience, environment, culture and so on. You receive those words and then interpret them in accordance with all of your education, experience, etc., and this results in a thought or picture forming in your mind. Now if our education and other things are reasonably similar, there’s a pretty good chance that the thought that ends up in your mind is fairly close to the one that was in my mind. However, the more of those parameters that differ, and the degree to which they differ, the more likely it is that the thought that forms in your mind is quite a bit different than the one that started out in mine.
So go ahead and make assumptions: just stop and think for a minute to make sure that they are valid and appropriate to the circumstances.
Don Lee
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