Don’t Assume: a Prelude To The (Usually) Right Answers
by Alfonsina Betancourt
Nothing like being a “why” kind of child to annoy a parent. It is a bottomless well: the more answers you get, the more questions arise. I was that kind of child, and it has taken me hours of therapy and self-help books to understand the effects of that in one’s psyche.
When we are always curious for answers, we are never satisfied with a statement. We need to know where that came from. Why did someone acted that way? Why did we reacted like that? Why that look? Why, why, why….
When I was in my early thirties, I was going through a very difficult time. My head could not get around to understand why someone had hurt me so cruelly. I played different scenarios, tried to put myself in that person’s shoes, questioned if I was in fact the one that was at fault. Through all my years of practicing the “let’s-find-the-reasons” game, I thought that there was always a motive for people’s behavior and even when I did not agree with it, understanding it made it easier to process and let go of any hurt. Was it healthy? I don’t know, but it certainly became a way to understand - and also justify - people’s actions.
While I was in that questioning process, a wise woman taught me a phrase that would become a sort of mantra for me: “don’t fill in the blanks.” It took a lot of repetition until it became second nature. If I did not have all of the absolute information, preferably from its source rather than somebody else’s recount, then I was not going to fill in the black with information I could not prove. I understood that in relationships, as in anything else, we could never take for granted we know the truth or that the other person has understood us unless we talk clearly about it. So, I practiced asking WHY to the people that had me on the dark.
More than a decade later, I got my first encounter with one of those books that change my life, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It presents a code of conduct based on Toltec wisdom to help us live freer and happier lives. According to the acclaimed author, these are the agreements: 1. Be Impeccable With Your Word. 2. Don’t Take Anything Personally. 3. Don’t Make Assumptions. 4. Always Do Your Best. When I read the third agreement I thought “I have no problem with this one; I never assume, I never fill in the blanks.” If a problem arises, I usually go ask the person why did they do something or what did they mean with their actions or words. I had a hard time with people that quit on long friendships because they think they knew the motivations for someone’s words. So they stop talking instead of calling that person out and asking bluntly, “is this what you meant? Because it certainly looks like this from my side.” No, I was no interested in falling in that trap.
As it usually happens, life always finds a way to debunk or challenge our beliefs. Ideally, when we are in doubt, we should ask the pertinent questions. We should try to find out the whys from the people who can actually answer them rather than assume we have all the information and acting on that. So we don’t assume and we go straight to the source. Easy, right? Most of the time, yes. But there are circumstances when it does not matter how much we would love to go back to the source and act like the inquisitive child we once were and ask “why?” Sometimes, that is not a possibility.
How do we reconcile our need to know with the impossibility of finding answers? Maybe it is not safe to confront the person or maybe learning the truth may put people at risk, or maybe it is a problem at work that can jeopardize our livelihood. When we are used to rely in the “why” in order to process a situation or solve a relationship problem, staying in the dark can be disconcerting. It makes it so difficult to move on. Curiosity then becomes the bait that hooks us in and does not liberate us but drown us.
As much as I want to abide by the Third Agreement and don’t make assumptions, there are times when we just need come to terms with the fact that the truth will not be available for us. We can only guess, we will never know for sure. We have to accept that we might never know the why or the what. I have learned that losing the need I had of looking for answers has been a difficult lesson. But as fish in a river, there are occasions when we need to learn to let them go. The truth sometimes is fleeting and we need to surrender to that even if it feels disorienting.
It is often said that information is power. But when the information can’t be fact checked, do we just relinquish all our power? When we place the potential for our healing on the answers we get from the outside world, from a person, from the universe, we are like weather vane in the wind. The only way to regain our power is by placing an anchor, and occasionally that anchor looks like surrendering to a half-truth. We might only see the tip of the iceberg, and that is all we are bound to see. The moment we make peace with the fact that we might never reach full knowledge, that we will never find out what or why something happened, is when we can start to heal.
The world does not always makes sense, an even then, we need to keep going. I realized that for me, the constant inquisition was a way to make sense of people’s action and justify their behavior. I always believed in the good intention of humans and the “whys” were my way to prove that people were not that bad. Guess what? sometimes we deny the truth because it looks like “because she was just a bitch”, “yes, your boss is a true narcissist,” “Yes, he never loved you,” “yes, you did not matter to that person as you thought” or “yes, she has no morals and was deliberately trying to hurt you.” We try desperately to look for another possible answer.
Don’t assume is such a great concept and it has proven to be the savior of so many relationships. But sometimes the only way to save us is to relinquish the inner child that constantly wants to know all the WHYS. Realizing that no answer might be the only answer we’ll get can be the beginning of our path towards acceptance and peace. It takes a lot of discipline to live in that space without the constant questioning. Or maybe we never grow up, and we always have a tiny speck of hope that eventually the universe will slid the right answers under the door when we least expect them and hopefully before they expire. By then, I hope all our whys can be transformed in some form of real-life Jeopardy, where the goal is to formulate the right questions. Why? Because, just because….
If you are interested in learning more about The Four Agreements click here