When We Assume Others Intentions

I had a rather surprising comment left on my blog yesterday, surprising in that it was totally unexpected and it caught me off guard since this person seemed to assume I had intentions other than what was the facts. It was from a Chef....he wrote.....Hi There,I hate to mention it, but that's actually my limoncello recipe, word-for-word. You really should give attribution when you use someone else's work. I've had the recipe on my site for a few years now and wrote it myself. It can be found at Whats4Eats.com in the beverage section.Thanks much,Chef Brad Harvey. I responded in truth that someone sent me the recipe with no mention of his being the creator of the recipe and that it was not anything intentional to not show his name. I went back through my blog and put his name with the recipe to give him credit. The whole matter had me thinking about assumptions. I assumed, yes I am assuming too, that he thought it was something intentional, or that I actually knew the recipe was his.

Then I thought about how our lives seem less peaceful with assumptions. After dealing with driving back and forth from the hospital with Mei-Lings health issues and the life and death situations, I realized that you can be a bit preoccupied when driving, not dangerously, but maybe not as aware of your surroundings when you are worried sick. I actually went through a red light one day, fortunately I was aware of the traffic, and it was a set of lights that has almost no traffic except when the company on the corner lets out for the day. I am now aware that some people are driving under such circumstances or they could be driving home from making funeral arrangements, or just found out they have a terminal illness. There are a multitude of reasons people can be preoccupied and make mistakes. Now here is where assumption can take two directions. We can assume they are just jerks and get ticked off at them and feel anger raise within us or we can assume they are under some serious stress and feel bad for them. We no doubt will never know the real reason but assuming with compassion changes how we feel, how we react.
Same with email. We can assume someone wrote us meaning something very nasty and we get all upset, fire off a reply while in that state of mind, only to find we took it all the wrong way. If we had assumed the best, we would have saved ourselves lots of negative emotions. Even if they did mean the email to be nasty and we took it to be not nasty, we are still coming out feeling better.

Now there are times when we question intention and its really more of a safeguard. I might assume that man crossing the road in a not so good part of town, that seems to be coming right for my car door is up to no good. I quickly lock my doors and get out of there. That might be a helpful assumption but no hard done to him, he had no idea I locked my car doors, so if he was just mindlessly wandering, well he didn't know what I was thinking so his feelings were not hurt.

Boy, this is a wordy post !

I am sure you get the idea. Don't assume the negative. If its obvious, that's not assumption.

I know someone who is always sure she is being talked about...everything is about her. Actually no one really gives her much thought but she assumes that people are far more interested in her life than they are. She fires off emails, angry, seeking to justify her actions when in reality no one was even thinking about her. She is laughed at and joked about now and people now expect her to get it wrong. Her assumptions have backfired.

I suspect at times we just feel like the world revolves around us when in fact it doesn't. I suspect we all have ego's that get bruised when they really weren't even touched. Its a lesson in life. Think on the bright side, expect and assume the best in people, its not going to make them better, but it sure makes us feel better and may just avoid some situations that were based only on what we think we know.