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Indeed, our past experiences help to inform us about the probability of certain events occurring. But we cannot reduce our interactions with one another to a cold calculus of probability of merely how someone might act; we cannot navigate life making the crass presumption that every situation is always exactly the same, that everyone is always exactly the same, or that you are always exactly the same, when the nature of this world is ever-changing. If we are not vigilant, this mentality can malign our perceptions of one another to constant preemptive judgments that ultimately corrupt our ability to treat each other with fairness, justice, and temperament.

No amount of intuition can allow us to circumvent the need to communicate with clarity, honesty, and humility with others in conversation.

Yes—of course it’s hard. Stop being emotionally weak, stop taking lazy mental shortcuts, and stop hiding from the truth.