In trust we trust?
What makes the world go round and round? A question that rankles this particular blog so much that it has not only dedicated several posts to the subject but also hasn’t come to a convincing conclusion yet.
Until now, that is.
The answer to the ever-spinning question is trust.
Yes, exactly. There is a huge element of trust — no, not hope or even, passion—which forces the elements—both man-influenced as well as nature-powered — to act accordingly. This submission to act begins even before our day starts. We trust the sun to show up tomorrow morning without fail. We trust the birds to chirp — if there are any left in your neighbourhood — and chai/kaapi to reach your lips. And then our day gets going with almost every instance depending heavily on our trust in others as well as ourselves. When we hail an Uber or a Jugnoo, we blindly trust the driver to reach us safely. In fact, we are so used to being transported with negligible accidents that we don’t even factor in the possibility of ending up in a car/autowreck. Finding ourselves in the middle of the road with our face decorated with shards of windshield while we are trying to click a selfie is the last image in our head.
That’s the power of trust.
Unfortunately, as is the case with benefits, there are side-effects too. And they reflect starkly on our day-to-day relationships. Parents trust their kids to be loving and vice versa but that isn’t always the case. The former are known to do irreparable damage to the vulnerables and when the spine bends, the now-grownup kids are known to harass the ones who brought them to the world. Similarly, two individuals, supposedly in love, can array on a path of destruction simply because they never managed to learn to value of trust. Even siblings can be at each others’ throats. This curse of mistrust can easily trickle down to the societal strata where people are strangers and the only excuse connecting them is business. Only one word for such mishappenstances: fraud.
If there is a human aspect that needs to (re)inforced into our literacy system — there is a vast difference between an education system and a literacy system; Japan has an education system whereas India has a literacy system — then trust should be it. We are fast approaching an era where people are going to be warm but inherently cold to each other. What makes this unavoidable situation worse is the normalization of space and context. It’s perfectly alright to mistrust somebody on the grounds of ignorance.
“I don’t know that person.”
Fair enough. However, let’s take a step back and check whether the benefit-of-doubt has been placed unilaterally here.
“That person doesn’t know you either.”
Without entering a common ground of strangers, isn’t it a bit immature to stop believing in each other’s goodness?
But then, we are humans. Fear is programmed by evolution and it has helped us skirt danger since time immemorial. We can trust our instincts as long as we don’t end up boxing ourselves to a corner of no return. Moreover, we can trust ourselves to pick up and move in a better — there is no such a thing as right — direction.
