We All Make Assumptions |
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19 Nov 2008 by Juliet du Preez
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A few weeks' ago my parents went to register to vote in the upcoming Presidential elections (we are talking South Africa here). They went to the local school for this process.
As they drove in the school gates, they were directed to a parking area. Having parked and walked to the main school entrance they were guided inside where they were then ushered into the school hall. All very standard practice.
The hall was filled with people sitting at desks, and my parents were requested to sit at the vacant desks at the back. Everybody appeared to have pencils, so my mother asked the man next to her if she could borrow his. He replied that "they would give her one".
So, there they sat as a woman walked up and down handing out papers.
Eventually she reached them and asked: "B1 or B2?"
My father asked: "What's B1?"
She replied: "Then you must be B2," and handed him a paper. It was an exam paper!
I am serious! This is a true story. My 70+ year-old parents had been ushered into a final year school exam!
Talk about assumptions!
Three people who assumed that simply because my parents were there, they were writing a school exam.
My parents who assumed that, simply because there were a whole bunch of people there, this was where voter registration was taking place.
Talk about unobservant!
The former did not consider my parents' age.
My parents didn't consider the fact that everybody was seated neatly (and quietly) at desks.
This incident illustrates (and illustrates very loudly) that we have the ability to make huge assumptions about the world around us. And we also have a significant capacity to screen out all sorts of evidence that doesn't corroborate our view of the world or how we want or expect things to be.
We run our lives on our perceptions. Fortunately, in this case, it didn't mean much for the "ushers", and for my parents it meant only a bit of a wait and then a walk to the school pavilion (where the registration was in fact taking place). But the effects of incorrect assumptions and inobservance can be disastrous.
Even if we don't know what assumptions we are making or what we are not noticing, it is always good to bear in mind that we are seing the world through our perceptions and not necessarily as it really is.
Where did you last experience making incorrect assumptions or being unobservant? What was the outcome?
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