Assumptions

I've been thinking this morning about the assumptions we all make. Assuming a store will carry something we're looking for when it doesn't normally, that the babysitter will know where the formula is 'cause the kitchen is organized sensibly, that our significant other can read our minds and knows why we do what we do.

I grew up changing countries a fair amounts, so moving to China I thought that I suffered from no illusions. I knew there had to be some assumptions I was making ahead of time that would turn out not to be true, and somehow I went from that knowledge to the assumption that I wasn't assuming anything ahead of time. China was a new country and a new experience, and I would just take it like it was!

And yet I got here assuming that my employer covered my [cell] phone, and discovered that they meant a landline. Over the last week I've had the growing suspicion that virtually all of the cashiers here were cheating me on my change because of the denomination of coins I was getting, and then I did some googling and realized that coins here do not work the way they did in North America, Eastern Europe, or East Africa. And there are so very many more, and more to be discovered as the days go by!

It's amazing just how many assumptions we make, even when we think we're not! Day after day I try to see what other assumptions I have lurking inside, waiting to be uncovered, but even so the discovery of new ones comes as a surprise. Another of life's lessons that has to be learned over and over again!