Why do people always pronounce assumptions as if they were a fact?
Let me start at the beginning. For an unknown and unspecified reason, I have woke up this morning around 5 am. I have been ill for the past two weeks, mostly closed between the walls and thanks to the past two days that I was feeling better, I offered to pick up some freshly baked bread from the bakery in the morning. So as I am ready to get up on my feet, and have a chance to exchange a few words with the sweet soul next to me, I double-check and ask whether the bakery will be open to receive an immediate answer with absolute certainty:
"It's open 24/7."
Cool, I think to myself, throw some clothes on and head to the car. I arrive at the bakery half-past five to realise that there are very few lights on inside and as I make my way through the door where two lonely souls acknowledge me by saying: "We are closed!"
Oh, you don't say, I think to myself. Go figure! My sweet one pulled this one again.
So I am here to ask a simple question, what is it that makes us so sure of our statements? We read, hear, or notice a fracture of information as we move through the crowded city or during the usage of public transport, catching the title in a newspaper by the corner of our eye and there we go make up the rest of the story. There is a lack of context in this world, a surface knowledge predominates, and the context is lost for most.
I remember all the times when my sweet one walked up to me and announced to me there was a new archaeological discovery somewhere in the Aegean and I go like "Oh, where? What project? Who worked on it? What did they find, and what period?" What I get in return is mostly the same: "Oh I did not manage to read the rest." After a while, I realised that news is merely a sum up of a title, for many of us.
I must say, I have always lacked this certainty. I dig deeper and deeper when interested, and the deeper I dig, the more uncertain of my knowledge I become. And don't get me wrong; the uncertainty is necessary for a scholar! I cannot even start to say how many times I have heard my colleagues talked about the ancient past like they have experienced it. All my mind does when hearing this, is it asks millions of questions (never out loud), which are immediately apparent and usually contradicts whatever facts were told. And so for the sake of knowledge, and prevention of useless runs to bakeries before the dawn, next time when we are to state something, let us think for a minute and draw a clear line between an assumption and fact.
Which brings me back to the present. As I typed the last sentence of this small contribution, my sweet soul wakes up, and after I tell him the story, he goes saying:
"Bakeries are always open around 4 am."
Go figure.
