Look at that red car.
What a jackass, right?
How can they be so bad at parking?
How can they be so inconsiderate?!
Well… as tempting as these assumptions are to make, they’re all completely wrong.
For starters, I happen to know the owner of the red car because she’s my neighbor. She’s a very nice person – decidedly not a jackass. And this is the only time in two years I’ve seen her park this way.
Secondly, when she parked there, the spot to the right was occupied by a large contractor’s truck that was wider than the parking space. My neighbor was forced to crowd the white car by the oversized truck that was in the now-empty spot.
And finally, the white car belongs to my neighbor’s daughter, who is away at college and therefore not using her car. So it doesn’t matter one bit that the red car is crowding the white car!
When I saw this, I realized that most people who saw the same scenario without background knowledge would make the mistaken assumptions I mentioned above. And then it occurred to me that I probably make similarly mistaken assumptions all the time.
So I’m trying to keep this in mind as I go about my days. When a judgmental conclusion about someone else’s behavior seems obviously correct, I should pause and consider alternative interpretations. I could be missing some key information that would contradict my assumptions.
This is not to say that our assumptions are always wrong. They’re often right, which is why we make them so readily. But we need to be careful not to automatically and unthinkingly buy into them.
Sometimes, there’s a story hidden behind what you’re seeing that makes your assumptions embarrassingly wrong. In other words, don’t believe everything you think.