In the Details

My Mother-In-Law is a massage therapist.  One of her clients is Prince Amukamara - he is a cornerback for the Chicago Bears football team.  Not only is he a regular client, she has also friended him and hangs out with him regularly.  Yesterday my children's father said to me, "Oh did you know you and Prince share the same birthday?!"  
"Oh yea?  Same year too?" I replied.
"Na.  '89." 
"Oh.  Oooh... wait, he's younger than me?!  Well that changes things."

You see, this whole time I thought that Prince was an older man.  In his early 40's maybe.  My Mother-In-Law spoke of Prince's wife and children before and just the way that he's been discussed I had ASSUMED that he was older.  Thinking that my MIL was regularly hanging out with some older, married man had this odd feel to it.  But when I learned that teeeny tiny detail about his age, it completely changed the "feel" of the situation from "creepy" to "nurturing".  You see, my MIL views Prince as almost a 2nd son.

The moral in this story is that nothing is ever as it appears to be on the surface.  That a teeny, tiny, seemingly meaningless unknown detail can change the reality of something ENTIRELY.  It got me to wondering how often I had made an assumption about something that was entirely wrong because I was missing a tiny piece of the puzzle.  The actual reality did not change at all, but my perspective of it did.

What is something that you are facing that could change entirely with the knowledge of a hidden detail?