Assume

Life seems manageable when you assume things. Even if you assume the worst, it allows focus, perspective, and planning. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary because questioning everything all the time just leaves us paralyzed. Any assumption _ even if it turns out wrong _ is sometimes better than being undecided.

I like easy assumptions. Tomorrow will be like today, today is a lot like yesterday. People are pretty much like me. My current situation is pretty much okay. And on and on in an absolutely Panglossian fantasy of optimism.

Of course, it is quite easy to assume exactly the opposite. All the pain and fright and worry. As they say, the pessimists left the country, the optimists died. Day to day, I assume optimism is a more useful outlook for a well-balanced life.

Questions are not only hard to do all the time, they are often useless. Most of what we face moment by moment is, after all, trivial. “Why should I assume I will have coffee for breakfast?” is not a conundrum that shakes the world. Like the brain that only seems to awaken after we somehow automatically arrive at a usual destination, consciousness focuses on major issues better when it can assume away the little things. A useful tool to glide through an infinitely crowded and interesting world.

And there we go. “Question everything” doesn’t work. “Assume everything” doesn’t work. And when to question, or assume, is what wisdom and survival itself are all about.