Trust: an often misquoted value

“We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.”– Lord Byron

Trust, it is the virtue of putting one’s faith in the other person. It is a value that allows you to know that the other person has your back. It is the value that has built institutions like family, friendships, society, and governments. It is expected to join all the human beings together. However, My experiences with people taught me something that was weird and strange. Equally worrying is the factor that this was a common element in many mock interviews given by students. Trust has become more destructive than constructive. It has become the same evil it was born to eliminate.

As a child my mother used to tell me that I must not talk to the strangers. In the school I learnt that one must not trust the strangers. In fact, the Indian railways taught me not to trust anyone during my journey. I thought that it was for my own welfare that each of these is talking about not trusting the strangers. Only once I did realize that the same warnings were against me to the other people. It works both ways.

As a child I was being taught to be afraid of the strangers, ironically the same person that I would become years apart. The railways are not just warning me against the others, but also warning them against me. As a child it happened many times that I waved at an stranger, who was kind enough to smile back at me. Once a stranger helped my father’s friend when he needed blood to save his daughter. Was that blood not strange enough?

This trust deficit brings a glaring issue to us. Trust is the basis of all the relationships we build, and without it they mean nothing. But things have deteriorated significantly. The best way to eliminate a doubt is to ask the question and then respect the answer without countering it.

Let me put things in perspective for you. A friend of yours is coming to meet you. He is en route via rail, and you are consistently monitoring the train. Now he arrives 3 hours later than the scheduled time, and blames it on the train for being late. Since you have been live checking the location, this becomes an issue now. The portal displays that the train arrived on time. You challenge your friend then and there with the data. He counters by mentioning that the data is wrong and he is not lying. However, since in your mind you have already made a notion that he is lying, you would not accept any explanation offered by him.

Later your friend files a complaint with the railways regarding the same, to which the railway replies by mentioning that this was due to a technical glitch and the data would be rectified in due course. You feel bad for doubting the person, but then the relationship has been dented already. Trust is like a revolving door. It works both ways. Since you did not trust your friend once, next time he would not be interested in offering you an explanation when something like this occurs, because he knows that you respect the “data” more than your “friendship”.

Now comes just one question: Is the data more reliable than a relationship? I believe the answer to that question is pretty simple.

Next big point to understand is the reason for this trust deficit. In this hegemony centric, competitive world, we are all trying to prove ourselves. However, this competition is now entering out personal lives as well. We tend to argue with the person again and again with the sole purpose of the argument. This competition has broken families and friendships.

I think it is often alright to let go of things. In military we have a common belief, that you might have to lose a few battles to win a war. The petty issues are merely battles of low intensity. Building trust is the war. By proving your point in all the petty issues you might win the battles, but you will end up losing the war.

For those who believe in bringing a change, I believe we simply need to change our perspective. Rather than teaching everyone “Not to Trust”, we must teach the society “Not to breach someone’s Trust”. It is simply a switch that needs to be made on the societal level. Although, I agree that this is no utopia, and there will be some people who will always betray, but in the words of Maya Angelou – “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”