“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you” -Friedrich Nietzsche

It was that time of my life when i was still struggling to show that i am no more a teenager, by the virtue of my micro mustache. I had the “first best friend” of my life. We used to play cricket together, and that’s all we used to do then. Studies were a mere ‘night watchman’ to score the runs…urghhh, the marks, to be able to be the part of the cricket team of our class, the following year. So after all the regular processes of winning the confidence of my parents, i was allowed to gift myself a cricket bat, my first ever. I scored 32 not out runs with it the very next day. And then i gave it to my “first best friend” to keep it at his place for the night as his home was nearby the ground. The next morning, when we met at the school, he was without my beloved. When asked, he said what could only suit a pro politician. He lied. Plain vanilla lie, that he knows nothing about the bat. That he never had it. This was the first time in my life that i was cheated upon, the trust was broken. I knew i had a lovely bat, but never thought it to be so good that someone could actually steal it.

“You can’t even trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.” W.C.Fields

What comes naturally to humans, trust or distrust? Should we trust everything and everyone until proven otherwise? Or vice versa? Or is it like ‘whats the big deal’ ? Trust: confident expectation of something. This is how oxford dictionary defines it. I feel, trust is like the oxygen concealed in the air. So, you just don’t inhale oxygen, but air and you exhale all that is not oxygen. Trust to me is exactly like this. Ideally you should trust in totality and then leave out all that’s not trustworthy. Let me explain. I can trust my bank to keep my money safe (even after Lehman Brothers) but i cannot trust them to not charge me exorbitantly. So what do i do? I negotiate. I keep a check. I exhale. Let’s take another example. When i drive i trust the road, my vehicle and the other vehicles. But then i cannot trust them so much that i drive with my eyes closed. And yet i trust them so much that i speed up, over take and follow their indicators(signals). I remain safe and keep moving. I exhale.

Another argument is that these examples are of a system driven trust and not instinct based trust. There’s a difference when you trust a bank/road vis-a-vis  a friend, family or a stranger. I agree. But, I feel we as a society are obsessed with ‘time’. We generally trust everyone and anyone whom we have known for a long time. It starts with the family, the very first people we meet on this earth. For the same reason childhood friends are trusted more than college friends. The old clients, employees, partners, brands etc. are blindly trusted. ‘Old is Gold’ works. Always? What ails the ‘new’ is the fear of unknown. Lack of knowledge/consciousness.

“I am fine when i don’t know what i don’t know. I am restless when i know what i don’t know.” – Anonymous Scientist.

Actually when we distrust someone/something we are distrusting our knowledge/consciousness of the person/subject and when we trust someone/something we trust our knowledge/consciousness of it. So when its broken or upheld, its that awareness/consciousness that’s at work and not the subjects credentials. Just come to think of all those people who have arrived in their lives, they reached that far not by distrusting but by trust. Trust in themselves. So when they happen to meet new opportunity/people their natural and first instinct is to trust, have faith, and nothing else exists. No question of distrust. Such is their conviction in their instinct of trust. Trust is not an emotion. Its an instinctive mental ability, something that enables you to reach the potty seat despite of complete darkness in the bedroom and a sleepwalking body and mind. You trust every step and hence every step trusts you. Its all about you and the consciousness about your self.

“There isn’t much difference between ‘distrust’ and ‘destruct’, is there?” -Anonymous Terrorist.

Sadly, in the times that we are living, every mother’s first lesson to a teenager is of distrust. DO NOT TRUST anything until proven. She doesn’t trust her upbringing and teachings. She doesn’t trust her trust in her ability to create of a good human being out of a kid. She doesn’t trust her very own DNA. And hence so much circumspection around with everything and everyone. I dearly feel, that the do-not-trust epidemic germinates here. The teenager starts feeling so insecure that his first and natural instinct becomes distrust. Which means: Not having confident expectation of something.
So we have a world where we spend big on networking but low on trustworking i.e. the people whom you can trust with your life. I hope to see a world where we grow in life not just because we know and we are known, but because we trust and we are trusted. Reading into the future and sticking my neck out, TRUSTWORKING will work more than NET WORTH and NETWORK both put together. The only way to make the world trustworthy is to trust it. No matter what. I do.

I still trust my ‘first best friend’, that the bat indeed was too lovely to part away with.