Each eye has a blind spot and your brain fills it in without telling you. Assumptions work the same way.

There is a patch in each eye with no receptors, and you never see a hole, because your brain paints over it with a plausible guess and does not inform you. Assumptions run the same quiet service, filling in why somebody was short with you or what they meant, and handing you the result as though you had observed it yourself.

Catch one filled-in gap this week. When you notice you are certain about somebody’s motive, separate what you actually saw from what you concluded. Then ask them. The answer is usually duller and kinder than the one your brain supplied.