What Was I Assuming Just Before I Reacted?
The urge to control a reaction may leave its cause untouched. The cause is usually an assumption we didn’t know we were carrying.
The urge to control a reaction may leave its cause untouched. What did I assume was happening just before I reacted?
A colleague replies to a long message with one word: “Fine.” Within a second I have decided they are annoyed with me, and within a minute I have written a defensive reply. Later I learn they were typing from a hospital corridor, with no time for more than one word.
The reaction was not the problem. It was a perfectly sensible response to what I believed was happening. The problem came a moment earlier, when I believed it.
This may sound like blaming people for their own reactions. It isn’t meant that way. Some reactions are entirely fair responses to real harm. The question is only whether, just before reacting, we knew what was happening or assumed it.
Managing the reaction leaves the cause
Most advice about reactions is about control. Count to ten. Take a breath. Don’t send the email tonight. These help, and they are worth doing. But they work on the reaction, not on what produced it. The same assumption will be there tomorrow, ready to produce the same reaction in a new situation.
We do the same thing with our lives in general. We keep changing our schedules, routines and environments without examining the understanding that makes those changes necessary. A new morning routine, a new app, a new city. The surroundings change. The assumption travels with us.
What an assumption is
Madhyasth Darshan describes understanding as both knowing and accepting (जानना, मानना). An assumption, seen this way, is something we have accepted without having known it. We act on it as if it were true, but we never checked.
That is why assumptions are so hard to see. They don’t feel like guesses. They feel like the way things are. We only notice them when reality refuses to fit.
“The most useful thing about a difficult situation is that it reveals an assumption I didn’t know I was carrying.”
Difficult situations as teachers
This changes how a hard day looks. A difficult situation is not only something to get through. It is information. Every sharp reaction is a marker pointing at an assumption, and the harder the day, the clearer the marker.
Pressure can do the same. If your understanding disappears under pressure, pressure may have shown you something you had not understood. Tiredness, overload and real danger can make anyone lose their footing too, and they are worth telling apart. In that sense, a pressure situation is not a bug in life. It is a feature with a very important purpose: it shows us exactly where to look.
Assumptions in our decisions too
It isn’t only reactions. Many of our choices rest on assumptions we never examined.
Sometimes I rush to implement an idea because it feels clear. Sitting with it a little longer reveals the questions my excitement skipped. We are constantly trying to improve what we do. We should spend more time examining the logic with which we decide what to do.
The first question about work should not be how to do it better. It should be what becomes better when it is done. Otherwise, doing the wrong thing faster is still called productivity.
Some assumptions hide inside habits. A habit is a decision you got tired of making. And some hide inside our schedules. Sometimes “I’m busy” means I haven’t yet said what I will not do. Sometimes it simply means there is too much, and the answer is help, not insight.
Resolve and patience
Finding our assumptions takes two qualities that are easy to confuse with stubbornness and passivity. Resolve is staying aligned with what’s true, and patience is staying aligned with what’s just.
Resolve keeps us looking for the assumption instead of defending the reaction. Patience keeps us fair to the other person while we look, even before we know what really happened.
And the planet?
Many of our demands on the earth rest on assumptions as unexamined as the one behind that defensive reply. That more is always better. That a bigger house will finally feel like enough. That the newer phone is needed. That growth is what makes a place prosperous. Each feels like the way things are, not like something we accepted.
The three lines in the practice below work here too. Before your next large purchase, write down what you are assuming it will give you, and how you could check.
A protocol to try
After your next strong reaction, once things have cooled, write three short lines:
What happened. Only what a camera would have recorded.
What I assumed was happening. The story I told myself in that first second.
How I could check. Usually this means asking the other person, simply and without accusation, if it is safe to ask. Where it isn’t, check another way: watch what happens over time, or ask someone you trust.
Then check. Sometimes the assumption will turn out to be right. Often it won’t. Either way, you will know a little more than you did, and the next reaction will have one less hidden cause.
Limitations
- Not every reaction comes from a mistaken assumption. Sometimes the first reading was right.
- Checking an assumption by asking the other person depends on it being safe to ask.
- Treating pressure as a teacher could be used to excuse putting people under unfair pressure. That is not what we mean.
References
- Madhyasth Darshan Paribhasha Sanhita, समझना (to understand), p. 186
