A Treatise on Trust

Since I have had an emotionally draining day and have no mood to study, I though I will do an introspection on TRUST. All the things written are my own thoughts, at the moment, from a frayed mind. They maybe strikingly accurate or woefully wrong. Correct me if I am wrong.

Trust by nature is very fickle. It cannot be relied upon, for the simple reason that every person's idea of trust varies. What I may consider an act of trust someone else may an act of selfishness. Acts that would otherwise have bridged gaps and strengthened trust can just as quickly be the undoing of a relationship.

A person can be thought of as a garden with a lot of beautiful flowers, thorns and touch-me-not plants, and a small lawn. The lawn is a person's comfort zone. It is nice to sit on and very co-operative and smiling during a conversation. Anything that you want to know about the person is here for all to see. This is the part a person likes to portray. Usually a very sunny picture with beautiful flowers at the edges. Flowers to only look pretty.

The flower garden is where you go once you are pretty close to that person. We get to go into the flower gardens of very few people in our lives, invariably because they are very well guarded. It is in this flower garden that you know the real character of a person. Whether his plants are rotten or whether there is a beautiful lotus in the murky pond. Trusting a person is going into this flower garden with the full knowledge of the owner and being able to pluck flowers without causing the person any pain. Most people flinch when their flowers are plucked because a plucking causes the same amount of pain, whether it is torn by a band of marauding Mongols or picked up by a beautiful young maiden to give to her loved one. The first plucking is probably the most important in terms of establishing trust.

Even when the first plucking is done, it does not guarantee easy access to everything in the garden. There are fickle things like the touch-me-not plants. They cringe at the slightest touch and invariably stay cringed until you vacate the premises. These are the sensitive parts of the person's mind that will not suffer your touch, however pleasurable or coaxing it is. It is actually the amount of touch-me-not s present in the garden that determines whether a person is an extrovert or an introvert. Try too much touching, or walk like an oaf and you're out of the garden before you know it. It is a very painful and difficult procedure to get back to the garden. Even if you make it back there, you will find most of it barred.

Tread very carefully where the touch-me-not s lie. They may be hidden to the eye or in plain sight. A person who willfully touches them and enjoys seeing them cringe is a friend to none. A person who touches one by mistake, causes cringing but can be forgiven. A humble request to all readers. Please differentiate between those that have touched your touch-me-not s willfully and those that have done so by mistake. Every touch hurts, but some you can bear. Pushing every person who touches them out of your garden will only make sure you have no more visitors.

Think how all of you act in others' gardens and then think of how they are treating you, whether you deserve it or not.

Gods be with you.