A colleague of mine has a habit of making assumptions in order to fill the gaps in his understanding of a given situation.

Recently, he had stayed in a rented apartment with his wife, and although there was a no children policy at the accommodation, he had noticed that there was a spare room adjacent to the rooms they had hired with two single beds in it.

He and his wife had surmised that the proprietors must open this locked room up, for the purposes of accommodating close family and relatives when they came to stay with them in their beautiful home.

On second telling, my colleague explains further that these relatives will have to travel from long distances to stay at the property, as the proprietors wife is originally from Bogota, Colombia, South America.

I listen to the first attempt to fill the gap, and then incredulously at the second deeper attempt which is told as a fact.

Time was, when I would have wanted to respond with a counter argument to dispute the logic, but I did not do so, because it seemed clear to me that it was futile to try to fill the gaps because the logic was based on summation, or assumption in the absence of fact.

It is quite possible, that their logic is truth, but without a credible question having being put to the proprietor as to use of the locked spare room, and also whether his wife’s relatives travel from Colombia to stay in them, there is no basis for a outcome which would resolve the matter.

…and does it matter??

Well, for me, none of the above matters, but I am rather interested in my colleagues attempt to explain the conundrum.

This propensity we have, to explain to ourselves the motives and actions of others in relation to their impact on us, not by direct questioning but by conjecture.

This seems to me to be futile, when the basic premise was that his sister and her children would not be able to rent the property because the proprietor does not accept children in the accommodation.

The danger of conjecture is that we internalise and believe a narrative which is not based on fact, and even if the proprietor was to confirm the summation that his wife’s family stayed in the property, we still would not fully know why children were not allowed to stay there.

Perhaps it is because they are too noisy and they will disturbed the proprietors peaceful home (situated adjacent to the rented accommodation) – oh here I go, I’m at it now – the futility of trying to fill  in the gaps – and I should know better than to do that!

My next blog will be: Yesterday was All We Had

William Defoe