Trust.

Sometimes it is hard to have trust. Actually a lot of times. I hear my friends sharing something with me and repeatedly telling me that it is classified information. Okay, why just my friends, I do that too! So my point of ponder today would be 'trust' or 'faith'. As a teenager when I was travelling alone in train, I met a young man who was my fellow passenger. I was leery of talking to him, let alone trusting him with something. He was a plain, normal young guy like me, almost of my age I guess. "Don't trust strangers. Don't eat anything anyone would offer" my mom's words rang in my mind loud and clear and I was looking at this guy like he is a threat to human kind. So, at a major station, where the train halted for quiet sometime, this guy got down and disappeared for sometime. He came back with a bunch of fruits munching on one. I tried to look away. He offered me a fruit. I took it, just to be polite. I didn't eat it.
"Please have the fruit" he urged me. "You look tired and it'll be a bit before we reach our destination" I didn't budge. Didn't think how concerned he was. I was plain rude and kept insisting that I was not hungry. After a while he stopped asking me and just put me on ignore. I probably deserved it:-)
It happens to us all the time. We are way to scared to trust people. We are scared of our trust being deceived or it might be some kind a defect that human beings have acquired in the modern world. Or it is just because words like trust don't make any sense in a endangered world where people look for opportunities to take advantage of others, or it is just because trusting someone at sometime had gotten us bad results.
My MIL, bless her heart, is a very kind woman. So after she retired from her services she wanted to sponsor a needy student. Who does she get to help? A loafer who lied to her about studying in some polytechnic college and kept on his highway robbery time and again asking money for fees and books till she learned one day about the deception. Now she thinks twice before she offers help to anyone.
So somewhere in between being trustful and trustworthy, we all lose the balance. It is a pity that we are advancing so well in many fields and that Apple guy outdoes himself with the IPhone ever other day but we seem to be so primitive in our basic things as trust, love and faith. We are in constant doubt about the people around us, even ourselves and most pitifully about the Almighty. I try to seek answers to these dilemmas in vain!
I'm often tempted to stop my car and give a lift to the guy eagerly looking for one but who knows if he would strangle me for money? The beggar around the corner of the block is probably buying drugs with the spare change he collects form people. The shopkeeper is probably cheating me on the price of the hiked rice - These are a few thoughts that cross my mind when I look around the world.
I once read in a book written by Swamy Vivekananda that we have to be filthy to notice the filth around us. There was an example quoted by him - something to the effect of saying a little kid would not identify a robber even if the thief does the robbery before the kid's eyes since the kid does not have a robber in him. Those words stuck me hard. We look around and form our opinions and look down upon all the bad things that happen around us. It is ironical that filth is everywhere including our own minds and we behave like a bunch of hypocrite bastards.
I do hope though, that Aarti would live in a world where being trustful or trustworthy does not come with a baggage and hope that I would not have to warn her about not trusting her own fellow human beings. I know I am dreaming but a mom can dream. Right??