Look before you Leap

Look Before You Leap

Today’s essay has to do with leaping. I intend to focus on two aspects of leaping. Leaping to Conclusions and Leap of Faith.

According to thefreedictionarycom, “Leaping to Conclusions” is To make decisions or form opinions before one has all the pertinent facts.

 Leaping to conclusions is something that one does without thought. With the Internet the way it is, with unverified information posted, anything can seem factual. So, even taking the time to research facts, a choice would be leaping to a conclusion if the facts were not authentic, leading to a wrong understanding. 

According to thefreedictionary.com, “Leap of Faith” is The act or an instance of believing or trusting in something intangible or incapable of being proved.

A leap of faith requires trust and would not necessarily need any facts to support a choice, though having some proof should solidify that leap. 

One is generally judged by the choices one makes in life. So, one should be very careful about jumping to conclusions and taking leaps of faith, especially when it involves decisions that might have unwanted consequences for one’s actions. 

Another thing one must do, should one make a wrong choice based on the above leaps, is learn from the mistakes so that when similar situations arise, one can remember the flaw in their previous leaps of faith and potentially leap to a better conclusion.

Some of us ascribe to those definitions yet fail to take the next step and learn from our mistakes. Our leap of faith, though consistently proven wrong, leaves us with a “Leap of Hope” that this next outcome will be different from the last one, and the person we should not have trusted has changed. After all, he is my friend. What could possibly go wrong? 

Of course, this has never happened to me. I am writing this for those who might benefit from my advice. I’m a firm believer in “Practice what you Preach.”