I met a 20 year old guy by way of an interview. I had asked
him his weakness. He went on to narrate a story where one of his friends wanted
money for something and this guy felt pity and lent him what he wanted after
arranging for the same. It later turned out that his friend didn’t want money
for that purpose at all. He was only cheating him. This guy hence concluded
that he has to be more vigil in a world such as ours and that was his weakness.
He couldn’t see through his friend’s intentions.
This conversation got me thinking. To trust is our first
instinct. We trust the lady or the guy who held us for the first time in the
maternity ward and cajoled us to stop crying. From that point starts our
journey in this world where we make most of our relations based purely on
trust. When our mothers came and introduced themselves as our mothers we trusted
them. Hence it is fundamental for a human being to trust another human being.
We live in a difficult world one would argue. It is survival
of the fittest as Darwin put it. So sometimes we find ourselves in a situation
where we are rendered vulnerable by another person. This person utilizes the
faith we put in them and uses to advance a personal interest. If this personal
interest is conflicting to our interests then we feel cheated. Our act of
putting faith in someone yielded a very negative result. Our minds are
excellent at remembering such things and creating strong defenses against such
a thing happening in the future. What we have essentially done is not created a
super intelligence to sniff a cheater from 5 feet, but a question to every
positive action or reaction from any person. The question is to ask about the
ingenuity of the action and the ingenuity of the person. This is not us
becoming stronger and wiser but this is us becoming weaker and petty.
If we start believing that our defenses are working fine and
we haven’t been cheated in a while, there is no extent to whose actions we are
going to question. We will find ourselves creating a nice little wall between
us and the rest of mankind. Though the attempt is to safeguard ourselves what
we have done is created distance. This distance will start hurting us when we
see that our loved ones care lesser and lesser for us because they are tired of
justifying every positive and negative action. If the defenses don’t get curbed
it is a sure shot way to loneliness because we feel that the other person is
only out there to hurt us.
What we need in an age like this is something we lost just
after birth, innocence. Let’s go back to innocence and trust the world. This
requires considerable effort if you have already perfected your defenses. It
requires us opening our eyes and hearts to believe that the world has a lot of
good to offer. It requires a huge effort of accepting that evil is not born but
it is a factor of circumstance. It takes huge acceptance of the world and an
action much bigger than that called forgiveness. Let’s forgive the world and
you will realize, more often than not, it reflects back smiling at you.
I did advise this to the kid who had come for the interview.
I guess we all can ponder on it and try it. I told him that he had to pat
himself for being a great friend and helping his mate out. I told him to
complement himself for having the courage and the conviction to do the right
thing and help his friend. He was genuinely being nice and that’s what he
should be happy about. He being good was never affected by his friend cheating
him. It shouldn’t get affected now. Forgive the world and it will forgive you.
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