Over the weekend a friend told me the story of a man who chased another man into a department store, pinned him to the ground and proceeded to bang his head against the floor mercilessly.

A do-gooder tried to get him to stop the beating but it continued.

He then warned the man that he had a firearm and that if he didn’t stop smashing this man’s head against the ground, that he was going to shoot him which he did and the man died.

But every picture doesn’t always tell the true story, as my friend pointed out.

Turns out the dead man was punishing the perpetrator he chased down who killed his wife and raped his young daughter.  In other words, the wrong man was shot.

We all alarmingly live our lives based on assumptions rather than fact.

A fact is something that can be observed and verified. 

Friendships are lost because of assumptions.

People are marginalized because of assumptions.

Even our own lives are lived based on what we assume we want to do for a living, who we want to be with and how we want to spend our time – not always the real reasons.

I share this story because it is fresh in my mind and hopefully will serve as a reminder of the great price we pay for acting on assumptions that we make instead of facts that we verify.

“To assume is to presume” – Jude Morgan

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