Jumping to Conclusions

• By administrator
• October 22, 2021January 15, 2026
• conclusions contemplation judgement jumping My Blog negative options possibilities situation
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I think we’re all guilty of jumping to conclusions in some form.  I recently heard a story that made me think about how we often delude ourselves into thinking that our perceptions and thoughts are valid despite the lack of evidence.  We are able to convince ourselves that the situation we believe to be true is reality  Sometimes we can be so sure that we are right even though we have no hard, cold facts.

One of my clients had an air conditioning specialist work for them for many years.  He came to work faithfully every quarter, did his job, interacted with all the tenants in the building and everyone genuinely liked him.  One day one of the tenants air conditioners malfunctioned and they tried to contact this man but he was not available and the call went directly to voicemail.  Day after day they tried to reach this man, but it continued to go to voicemail.  The longer it went without response the more stories they started making up in their minds about this person; his unreliability, and even his character.  It was so interesting to me how they went from zero to 60 in a matter of days; from this man being a wonderful human being to now being the scourge of the earth because he didn’t return a phone call.

The bottom line is that no one entertained the idea that there might be something wrong.  It wasn’t until after one person took it upon themselves to take the time to find this man, that they found out that this person had actually died unexpectedly.  He wasn’t negligent, refusing to do the work, avoiding them, or any other negative attribute that they wanted to attach to him; the poor man was simply no longer on this earth.

Since we live in the days of technology where every device locks and needs a multitude of passwords and authorization codes to get into, it’s not surprising that no one contacted the tenants to let them know; his family was not even able to get into his phone to view his contacts.  It’s so sad to think that we all automatically go to the negative side of a situation before contemplating other options or possibilities.  These tenants knew this man for many years and loved him, so why after a few days of non response were they so willing to denigrate his reputation?

Whatever happened to giving a person the benefit of the doubt?  What about innocent until proven guilty?  I think we could all use a healthy dose of introspection before we are willing to judge someone without any of the facts.  After hearing this, I know that I will think twice before passing judgement on a situation and I will take the time to do the research necessary to find out the truth.  We can all learn a lesson about this.  May this poor man rest in peace…