What (Almost) Getting Scammed Taught Me About Myself — And What I Did About It
Number 3 — We all underestimate our intuition.
I consider myself to be a rational person, a person not driven by emotions and therefore, generally able to take decisions in a calm, collected manner. It is important to know this because recently something happened that not only taught me about my own vulnerabilities and insecurities but also how human emotions work.
The Story
My father has Parkinson’s Disease— a progressive disease affecting the nervous system and movements. He has had it for 15 years and seeing him transform from a sports-loving, active person to someone who freezes randomly and is not able to move has been absolutely heartbreaking for the entire family. He manages well, his spirit is intact but I and my family feel helpless about the situation.
Okay, so story time — I and my family were at one of the most famous hangout places in Delhi when a young man approached us and asked us if my father has Parkinson’s. We affirmed it. He then told us how his father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s many years back and a ‘herbal oil’ made him much better.
The man knew the names of the medicines people suffering from Parkinson’s take and knew everything a family member of someone who suffers from Parkinson’s would know. He then mentioned that his brother was the one who had prepared the oil based on a recipe given by an Adivasi. He hadn’t mentioned any money and he had us hooked. We were hopeful, excited, and looking back now — stupid.
I know what you guys are thinking — this totally sounds like a scam. How stupid you can be? I look back at it and still can’t believe we fell for it — all of us (barring my father who was convinced from the first day that it was a scam).
To put it briefly — we agreed to take his help because he mentioned no money and herbal ingredients are relatively cheap where I live. The guy seemed to be a good person who wanted to ‘help’ someone just as some stranger had helped his father. It was at a very late point that we realized that the ingredients were really expensive and we were expected to cash out almost INR 2,70,000 (3500 US Dollars) for a ‘herbal oil’ that claimed to ‘cure’ Parkinson’s patients.
It was only by luck that I was able to come across an article detailing a scam with a shockingly identical modus operandi. I sent the article to my mother and brother who were on their way to buy the ingredients and we were able to save our money, even though our hopes (and a little bit of self-esteem) were destroyed. We were saved at the last minute, by some kind of luck and God’s blessings.
What I realized about myself
This is where my newfound understanding of not just my susceptibilities but also human emotions come in. I introspected about the incident (a lot) and realized 3 really powerful truths —
- I Don’t Really Understand How Truly Vulnerable I Am
The reason all of us got convinced by the scammer easily is because he gave us hope of making my father better. I hadn’t realized till the incident happened just how vulnerable we felt about not being able to help my father with a chronic, progressive, incurable disease.
It is important to know about one’s weakest vulnerabilities so that one doesn’t fall prey to someone’s words. Writing about your biggest vulnerabilities in a Journal is a good start — keep thinking about it and make modifications to the list as you move on with life. The exercise will bring a sense of clarity that can potentially help you someday.
2. Hope Is A Beautiful Thing — But Also Perhaps The Most Terrible
Hope is a really powerful thing. It can be like the light at the end of the tunnel — something that keeps you going when nothing else makes sense. However, because of how powerful it is, there will be people in life who WILL try to misuse it. People (like the scammer) who will give you hope to take advantage of you and will not even feel guilty about it.
This doesn’t mean you stop hoping — hope is the only thing we have, even when we have nothing. But this does mean that we all need to be careful — because there are people out there to misuse this very thing.
3. I Underestimate My Intuition
Later, when we all sat down to discuss what had happened — there was one thing in common. Each one of us had, at some point of time during the incident, felt that something was not right but we all decided to ignore our gut feeling. My mother ignored it because she didn’t want her gut feeling to come in way of her husband potentially getting better. I ignored it because I am a private, reserved person generally wary of every person I meet for the first person. The reasons were various but none of us listened to our instinct.
We could have paid for it heavily but were saved this time. The incident taught me that whatever the situation, one should listen to their gut feeling — it generally comes from a place of protection and is generally, right.
It is a shame that some people misuse emotions but it is equally important not to lose hope in humankind.
Anyone can fall prey to a scam — my mother is a 50-year-old housewife, I am a 25-year with a law degree, my brother is a 30-years old businessman, and his wife is a highly educated woman having a corporate job. We are all educated, we have all heard stories about such scams. In the end, none of it mattered. Not the education, not the knowledge, not even our usual paranoia — all of us fell prey to a scam because of our love for my father. We fell prey because we had all gotten so hopeful that we kept dismissing our gut feelings. We know better now and that is what matters.
