A few weeks ago, I walked into a 7-Eleven.
A young man was standing near the register. Before he had done anything, I was already certain I knew what was about to happen.
I expected him to put a few things on the counter, wander off to collect something else, and leave everyone else waiting while he finished shopping.
He didn’t.
Whatever story I had been telling myself disappeared almost immediately.
That wasn’t what stayed with me.
What stayed with me was how certain I had been. I hadn’t consciously reached a conclusion. I hadn’t stopped to think about it. My mind had simply supplied the ending before anything had actually happened.
After that, I began noticing the same thing in other parts of my life.
Someone says a few words, and I think I know what they mean. I meet someone for the first time, and I think I know what they’re like. A conversation starts, and I think I know how it’s going to end. Sometimes those impressions turn out to be accurate. Sometimes they don’t. What interests me now isn’t whether they’re right or wrong. It’s how quickly they appear, and how completely they persuade me that they’re simply reality.
I don’t always know where these stories come from. They no longer feel like conclusions. They feel like reality. Now, when I notice that familiar sense of certainty, I find myself asking a different question. Not, Is this true? But, What happened that made this feel so obvious?