How Do You Know If Someone Is Trustworthy?
In our life, we face situations where we are either asked to choose between trust and disbelief. Many of us would say we have to choose trust...Wait!! We are given intellectual capability to choose what we want and what we choose certainly need not be the one that sounds pleasing. That is, we can choose both trust and disbelief, but we have to know when to choose between these two.
We would certainly come across friendly looking people along our way in life and we certainly would feel tempted to choose trust over disbelief. Now this article is not about avoiding trust but on its sensible use. Any commodity used wisely will only be valuable - Trust is certainly one such thing.
We should all realize that we are living in a world which is unfortunately teeming with indifferent people, if not cunning. We have been given the faculty of discerning who we are interacting with and who we are partnering with.
This world was there before us and it does not owe a single thing for us. We are asked to take care of ourselves and our belongings; Trust too has to be saved for the deserving people. When we shower trust universally on all, we end up nauseated by the undeserving fraudulence that is prevalent. People say trust is life. True!!! But ONLY wisely exercised trust is life.
When we start a discourse with someone, the first things that we usually notice would be their dress, demeanour, style and their language. What sometimes we all forget to look at is the person's intention. Now how to look at a person's intention is a lesson everybody has to learn for themselves in their own way - there is no single standard operating protocol for it. But it is certainly possible to discern the intent if we seek a little bit more.
Certainly a spurious offer of friendship or guidance cannot stand unmasked for long; we are therefore called to exercise this factor called disbelief over trust at least temporarily till we find out for ourselves that we certainly are in collaboration with a mutual good willed fellow human and hence, who would be responsible for the repercussions of unwise application of trust - Yes, the person who trusts that way.
The world teaches you lots of lessons and if we are willing, we can learn all that we want.
Example:
There was a sage and one of his disciples asked him, "Teacher, who is the smartest in this world?"
The sage called him and asked him to look at a cat that was lying down. He said to the disciple,"Anyone like that cat is the smartest man in the world."
The disciple shrugged.
The sage asked him to watch the cat and after a couple of minutes, the cat leaped into the air on to what was a small rat a couple of metres away.
Then he turned to his disciple and said, "Did you see that cat? It lies down, avoids distractions, waits and then goes toward what might be its prey or play. Anyone who exercises such caution with others is the smartest man."
Hence, before placing our trust in someone, it is smart to weigh the person's genuine nature and intent.
Let us remind ourselves of what a south Indian philosopher said:
"Treat everyone, but Trust only the deserving."
Copyright © 2009 Sam Vijay Kumar