Tag: gems

– photo courtesy of http://tophat-imc.com/

It’s Saturday morning here in CHItown.  The sun is brightly beaming down onto Lake Michigan, creating quite a glare on the water.  From my perspective, the blue waves are causing the surface of the water to look like billions of sparkly, shiny gems.  Not that I mind, of course.  But this seemingly normal occurrence triggered my mind to recall a recent event that I wanted to share with you.

Back to the luminescent Lake Michigan for a moment.  As I looked out (sporting the sunglasses, mind you) onto the water, I made a number of assumptions.  I assumed the water was moving quickly because I saw waves instead of a smooth surface.  I assumed the sunlight was intermingling with the waves because the water looked like an endless sea of dancing diamonds.

So these assumptions on my part were made based on my perceptions.  But what if  suddenly I was to take a boat (which would be quite lovely, don’t you think?) out onto Lake Michigan and peer down into the water.  The water wouldn’t look blue at all.  The waves would perhaps not seem as pronounced, and the sparkly gems would somewhat lose their luster.  We make a lot of assumptions, don’t we?

Which leads me to my little experience this past week.  While waiting for assistance at my local pharmacy prescription counter, a woman approached and stood behind me for about one minute before she commented, “Um, don’t you think you’d get served faster by going to the front of the store?” She noticed my arms were filled with various items (toothpaste sale; how could I resist?) and assumed she would have to wait longer behind me for my purchases to be completed.  I turned around and said, “I’m picking up a prescription as well.”  Her annoyed demeanor changed as she realized her incorrect assumption that I was only at this counter to purchase a ton of toothpaste and nothing else.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have put my nose in it”, was her response.  And she meant it.  I told her it was perfectly alright, no worries.  It did tweak my brain though, on how many assumptions we make based on our perceptions.  Sometimes we are right; and other times, why, perhaps we should try to think about a situation from various angles before snapping to assumptions.

– courtesy of http://www.quotationof.com

What about you, can you think of a time you made an assumption based on your perceptions only to find out later you weren’t on the bulls-eye this time?