The young twin brothers, Shaker and Nabeeh, found themselves at a dangerous decline in their lives. They both have failed to maintain the required academic GPA for admission to university in the engineering college they had been dreaming of since they were young, one in mechanics and the other in electricity. Definitely, this is a dismal situation, and its “objective” details are affecting both. However, the twins decided not to bother themselves too much about it. Shaker acknowledged that the “undesirable” had already happened, and there is no way to get over it other than just accepting reality. Taking up his grandmother’s wisdom, “the good is yet to come.” To find another specialization that can promise him a bright future, he reignited his old interest in different specializations throughout the many stages of childhood and youth through reading and having constructive discussions with his parents and peers.
On the one hand, Nabeeh started to envy his peers who had access to the engineering college seats at the same university they had registered to. They attained the opportunity to study in the university not due to their high GPAs, but because of their last names. He also envied those who received adequate support from their families to study engineering at private universities. He found himself filled with feelings of hatred and anger. However, Shakir did not stay long with these feelings due to his further deepened relationship with literature. He discovered that he is still fond of literature. Therefore, he abandoned engineering and enrolled in the College of Arts, pressing refresh on his dreams. Nabeeh, on the other hand, did not want to get over it. He decided not to force himself to choose any other major in the first semester or even the whole year. He sees himself in his dream as a prestigious mechanical engineer, especially since one of his uncles promised him to intervene in order to give him a position in the following semester.
Shaker graduated weeks ago after gaining amazing creative writing abilities. Heralding the birth of a unique writer with the possibility of a good job. However, Nabeeh is still in the same position, a “ghost engineer” for the foreseeable future.
There are two lives. One within us (our point of view and assumptions) and one beyond us (what is around us of situations and events). External life represents “life in itself”, which is the actual life. On the other hand, inner life reflects what we understand about life and how it affects us. We often strive to change our lives through what we don’t have (just as Nabeeh did with external life and his insistence on engineering), and we lose sight of what we have control over in our lives, which is to modify our assumptions, because life is only based on assumptions (as Shaker did in his internal life and his flexible transition into literature).
Saying life is based on assumptions does not mean that we underestimate or deny the reality of life as it is. Our intention in this article is only to address life psychologically, not epistemologically. Meaning, we’re never going to address the reality of life, we will work on what life shows us, and the potential effects it could have on us. However, we do not call for the abandonment of a sense of challenge and determination to achieve our dreams, which has its own respect in its appropriate contexts. This is rather a call for “psychological resilience” to the uncontrollable course of events in which we have nothing but one thing, which is to change or modify our assumptions.
Let us categorize assumptions to clarify the idea and reap the practical benefits. We will divide the assumptions of life, without complexity, into four types only, namely:
- Valid assumptions:
These assumptions are not contextual, they are more like absolute assumptions or perhaps so in some cases. We are in a situation that does not require further action, other than preserving and developing these assumptions, and doing the necessary periodic and corrective maintenance. This represents a reasonable proportion of our assumptions in life, and it varies from one to another, depending on many cognitive and psychological factors, experiences, and maturity, etc. Among these absolute assumptions is national affiliation and loyalty, represented by your permanent alignment with your country’s best interest.
- False assumptions:
We may or may not be aware of our involvement with these false assumptions. Moreover, awareness of the falsity of assumptions for one reason or another is not enough. They must be amended “internally” as soon as possible in order to minimize the losses, and we may experience hardship and trouble that could cost us our whole happiness. This situation requires a realistic example. For instance, Mansoor, a forty-year-old man, has a stable family and a stable income. Moreover, he treats everyone in a tactful way. He is never late to respond to people’s communication and messages on social media; for example, he must reply to his WhatsApp messages. Due to his decent manner in responding to all people on time, he expects that everyone must treat him the same way as he does. Therefore, he gets very upset whenever he does not get a response with a cautious choice of words to his messages in WhatsApp. His annoyance steadily increased. Initially, he decided to stop responding to their messages. Then, he found himself filled with negative feelings towards them. He talks to himself saying that they did not even bother to send any messages ever since I stopped initiating, and it has been over a month.
We gave him the idea of changing his assumptions before he gets lost in his feelings of hatred and aversion. There are some people who are good at communicating in person but not virtually. Moreover, he has been informed that virtual communication is built on the rule of mutual amusement. This is the main reason why many people don’t even bother with their messages, and whether they respond or not, while you are waiting anxiously for their responses. At the beginning, he was not convinced by the idea of changing his assumptions or the diagnosis that had been made. After a while, he found it actually accurate. He thanked those who helped him with changing his assumptions, which he described as “ridiculously idealistic.”
- No longer valid assumptions:
These are “contextual” assumptions. There are assumptions that are valid at certain times or stages of life, but they lose their validity, effectiveness, or efficacy in other situations or contexts. This type requires periodic review, to ensure that it retains its contextual validity. For example, Abdullatif, a 50-year-old man, is a government employee who has diabetes and high blood pressure. He did not heed the warnings given to him by his faithful doctor about 10 years ago, when he told him that he long passed the stage of devouring sweets, ice cream, dates, and large quantities of bread and rice.
Abdullatif did not realize that the assumption of enjoying eating whatever was nice and sweet in unreasonable portions in youth on the condition of working out is no longer valid. By assuming that this assumption is absolute rather than contextual, he lost his health, his ability to enjoy eating food freely, and many other things. This type of assumption is one of the most insidious and deceptive. We may not be able to discover it, it is often done via a faithful friend!
- Partially valid/false assumptions:
These contain partially valid or false assumptions. They may hold validity in some of their dimensions. This requires adjusting some of the assumptions to make them more realistic as much as we can. For example, Hind, a woman in her thirties, is complaining that her husband’s brother interferes in their own affairs. He is always free to catch the most details particularly due to the fact that he is single and retired. Their relationship has become unsettled. She has asked for divorce after almost a year of marriage. We asked her to rethink her assumptions. Also, we advised her not to take everything her husband’s brother says as an actual “interference.” There are some which can be viewed as advice, others are merely words to pass the time, and others are actual interferences. In fact, this happens in many homes. Finally, she got convinced to change her assumptions, and is currently living in peace and happiness. This did not require from her anything other than merely changing and adjusting her assumptions! Furthermore, this is an uneasy type of assumption to discover because it involves some degree of rationality, which requires a high degree of insight.
I will include this short article with a situation that happened to me personally a while ago, which made me really upset. After a while of thinking, I have reached this rule: “It may require no more than a decision not to be disturbed!” I was able to adjust my assumptions to be more rheological with this humorous idea. I relieved myself from miserable feelings by remembering the Prophetic hadith that says, “A good soul is a source of bliss.” To live a pleasant life, bless yourself with positivity.
T1651
