Seeker of truth means refusing to make assumptions

When we talk of assumptions, I always remember the famous quote "That being well-schooled and being well-educated are one and the same thing" and also "Just because something contradicts their existing knowledge and everything they were taught to be right, it must be wrong" We make so many assumptions in our lives that keep us away from reality.

The very fact that our so called whole education system is churning out students whose prime focus is to score well in exams rather than learning. The job of schools should be to teach students to ask the right questions, and then set them free to explore for the answers, instead of encouraging only mugging or learning by heart the whole syllabus of the curriculum.

What most people don't realize is that between regions of 'acceptance' and 'rejection', there lies another an option - a very fine path of 'entertaining an idea'. Moreover, if you can learn to entertain the idea and think about what if it were true, how it would relate and affect or perhaps contradict the other well-established theories, that would be the best exercise you can ever have to broaden your mental horizons.

For example, when you tell someone something, they get exactly what you meant them to understand. And there is always a loss of actual data in verbal communication. The same is quite evident from the fact that words are often interpreted differently by different people, and this is specifically why we often see one word to have multiple meanings.

If you know a wrong assumption that most people make is that cause and effect are immutable across all spectrums. For example, we know that the stove could be hot, so we don't touch it because we will be burned and hurt. We know this because most likely we have tried it sometime in the past and been burned. Few things are as memorable as great pain, so we take great care to avoid it.

However, it so happens that cause and effect are generally very effective. For example, if you are nice to people (cause), most people will be nice back to you (effect). But not always. You can be nice to some people and still get the cold shoulder. But more often than not, it is the case that if you are nice to people, they will be nice back. By the same token, if you flip off your boss and call him a moron in an important meeting (cause), there's a high likelihood you will be fired (effect). Cause and effect can be readily demonstrated and as a result we begin to see it as an immutable law.

But it is not. It may fail rarely but it does fail and sometimes those failures are critical. This is why "persistence" was invented. This has a particular effect on relationships. For example, shy boys grow up with no confidence and get shot down by girls. Asking a girl out for a date is the cause. Getting shot down is the effect. Eventually this comes to be seen as an immutable law to him and he may lower his goals and expectations until he finally achieves a goal. Not necessarily the goal he wanted to achieve, but a goal nonetheless.

Therefore, this is how confident men succeed wooing women, getting work, doing sales targets - anything they want to achieve. Just because a plan failed today doesn't mean its alternatives would have automatically fared any better, or even that it's a bad plan. Tomorrow, under the same conditions, things might have changed in such a subtle fashion as to be undetectable -- but the same plan might succeed.

For that reason, a man asks out a woman way above his station over and over no matter how many times she rebuffs him because today, some circumstance may have shifted in her life such that, just this one time, she decides to give him that chance, and then the world changes for both of them. Cause and effect rule the world. But that doesn't mean that it always is the case and always applies. Persistence, confidence, and chance have a way of changing the playing field. If it didn't there would never be an underdog winner and no need to play that big game where the odds were stacked against the other team. But we do play it because we know that anything can happen.

I just think that too many people get stuck in the belief or rut that things cannot change no matter what we do. I know because I realize I am one of them who think this way too frequently. There is a fine line between futility and persistence, just as the line between victory and defeat can be razor thin. We can be standing on that line and not even know that the next push -- or the next retreat -- is what will decide our future. Cheers!