Assumptions, by Phillip Hoyle

The professor said to her students, “I don’t so much care about what you conclude as I do about what you assume.” She went on to explain that two people cannot actually discuss any issue until they discover what assumptions they share. If they do not have enough assumptions in common, they actually have nothing to talk about. For her, assumptions were at the heart of any matter.

Early in my church-related career I learned a process called Strategic Planning. It began with defining your goal. That would be the picture of what you hope to accomplish. The second step was to write out your assumptions about the project. Such assumptions might have to do with your own ideas that lay behind the goal and objectives, those of others who might be involved in the project, the available resources, and so forth. In group planning this look into assumptions might be brainstormed. That part would give the group a look at whether there was any hope for the goal to be pursued to its end. Sometimes the assumptions are not in accord enough to keep the group together. I used that process regularly in my work, and as a result amassed quite a number of files describing the assumptions that I held or assumed participants might hold. Those files went to the trash bin outside the church building when after thirty years I left that work.

My most recent use of this process me occurred a number of years ago when I was recruited to lead “Telling Your Story” at the GLBT Center of Colorado. I had been in the group for a few months and thought I had better clarify my own assumptions about my participation, what I had observed about other participants, what I had picked up from the originating leader, about how the setting would affect the group, about the meeting time, about the Center’s interest in the project, about the elder aspects. I wanted the program that I had found to be significant to keep working well for me and for others, and I wanted to clarify for the SAGE program director what to expect from me. I asked the director to review my assumptions about Participants, the relationship of the group to the Center, and the process of storytelling.

One past SAGE director suggested one important assumption, saying it was better to come to a group on Monday afternoon than to stay alone in one’s apartment drinking. I suppose that would come under the category Assumptions about Participants.

Not long after that assumption was shared, another one surfaced from a “Telling Your Story” participant. He assumed that we would want to publish our stories. I’m still chewing on that idea and doing a lot of work.

There was another assumption, one I thought better and truer. When I told my artist friend Sue that we weren’t an activist group, she said, “Phillip, anytime you get a group of Senior Citizens to tell the stories of their lives; that’s activism.” Her perspective came from working several years in a Senior’s living and care center. I suspect we haven’t yet covered all the assumptions possible. Perhaps these last few assumptions are more points of view related to what we have accomplished together as a group.

© 27 March 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com