Trust - Gain versus pain

I'm inspired to write this post as a follow-up to a topic I recently discussed with a couple of friends, on Twitter. And this post is most certainly dedicated to the two of them.

To start with, I'll just lay down the points of discussion, numbered to make them easy to refer to, later in the post...

1. To trust is to be vulnerable.

2. To trust blindly, is to ask for trouble.

3. If you trust someone, you give him/her the power to hurt you.

4. When you trust blindly, there's much higher risk that someone you trust will actually hurt you.

When you trust, there are two main elements involved: the guarantee that you're expecting, and the guarantor. There has to be a close tie between these. (Please assume for the purpose of our discussion, that the guarantor doesn't explicitly communicate that he provides the guarantee. Also assume, that what you're trusting is something positive. Not, for example, "I trust that the bus will be late.")

If the guarantee is delivered, we stand to gain, since things happen the way we hoped for. Otherwise, we stand to lose. This justifies point 1 above and, partially, point 3. I'll come back to the reason for saying "partially" later in the post.

Now, what are the situations in which the guarantee is not delivered? Maybe the one we trust can't actually do what we expect. Lets say, I trust my friend borrows my Ipod, and I trust him to return it in the same condition, but he returns it with scratches. Or I trust a friend to reach on time for my birthday party, but he gets stuck in traffic and reaches when the party is almost over. Possibly, the only way to handle these scenarios is to develop a kind of inbuilt analysis of whether someone can be guaranteed to do something. It's still not really a guarantee, though, because there could be a lot of unknowns involved. When I understand that there isn't a high certainty the event happening, I plan for the non-occurance mentally, and also try what is known as "risk mitigation". If Alfred stays on the other side of town, and I know he can't start from office earlier than 6 PM, there's a chance he'll get stuck in the traffic on the way, and I should be mentally prepared to move forward with the party, and also put aside some cake for him so that it's not all over when he reaches. In other words, I trust that Alfred will "do his best" to reach my party on time, but may not be able to. This is where I say point 3 is partially true. Agreed, Alfred may not "do his best" and may get hooked to some girlfriend on the way, and hence be late. But if I know Alfred is inclined to do that, I probably wouldn't be surprised (or "hurt") when I find out. :)

When we trust "blindly", we just presume that everyone will understand the implicit "guarantee", sometimes even when there's no scope for such common context. Whenever we hear "I expected him to do X, but he didn't" ringing in our minds, and feel hurt, the things to check for are: Does he know that I expect X? Is it feasible for him to do X? Another important question is: Would he want to do X? Lets suppose you're travelling alone in the train with a lot of luggage(generally a bad idea, but anyways...), and you want to take a quick stroll down the compartment. Now, you might have been chatting a lot with the nice family that sits next to you, and might be tempted to request them to "watch over" for a few minutes. And they might agree too, but they might not really be in much of a position to take care of your luggage, or even want to do so. If someone picks something out of the front pocket of your bag, they might not even notice, and it might be in your best interest to lock up luggage, chain it, and then take your stroll. Of course, the new assumption here is that someone cutting chains or breaking locks is quite likely to catch other passengers' attention. :)

Another time when we tent to trust "blindly", (and the more common one) is when we have known them for a long time. Most of us trust our families blindly. Sometimes, this does crop into unfulfilled guarantees("Dad, why didn't you buy me an Xbox for my birthday?" :)), but we don't "lose out", since we know it was just a misunderstanding and not an ill intention. We talk to them and clear out the misunderstanding. Also, one could argue this is not blind trust, and instead a relationship built over time, where we know how they are likely to react to almost any event.

We also tend to develop a lot of trust for friends that we've known for a long time, and expect a lot of unspoken understanding, just like we did with our parents. There's always a likelihood that this kind of trust can go "blind" at some stage, where the friends keep making assumptions and not communicating. And when that happens, the chances of your friend hurting you can actually go quite high, because the expectation of "guarantee fulfilment" is very very high... sometimes because you didn't understand the friend's intentions right, sometimes because he didn't know you had the expectation.

In short, don't trust blindly, and you'll be much better off. Don't trust anyone for anything and everything. Make sure you trust them to do the specific thing you expect from them. If unsure, try to make sure somehow, or maybe lower your expectations.

Living on the edge!

This blog post is dedicated to dk, who asked me an interesting question in the comments section of the previous post. It is likely that I may not answer the question completely, but here's my take on it. :) For a purely moral point of view, I'd point you to my other blog which I'm trying to slowly and steadily build up and present what might be a basis for an individual to develop his own moral system.

Living on the edge can be a philosophy of life. Have you ever got onto a roller-coaster ride? If you have, you have a very small glimpse at the kind of pleasure it might give you. Very small, though. Because there's a slight difference between a 5-10 minute ride, and your whole life. :)

If the brain in conjunction with your heart, guides you to live life on extremities, then you're probably doing fine. As long as, after every experience, you evaluate the consequences, your brain is likely to take corrective measures. For instance, if you slip while handling a crazy snowboarding trail, and get fractures, you'll take care next time. Or, at least, you'll know to be more careful when you take out someone else with you, and prepare them for the situation.

Picture this: You must have seen lots and lots of the Guinness records. If you imagine, these people can't achieve what they've done without taking major risks. And, at the end of the day, did they really need to take the risk? You and I can't judge that, because they live to see the results.

Following the heart really is important. And, we shouldn't forget... Id, ego and superego would play their role in both your mind and your heart. (Unless you stick to the old school of thought that says it's scientifically only the brain that influences both emotions and thought, not the heart. ) This means your train of thought would be something on the lines of:

Id: Lets race on the road!

Ego: Ok, we can't overtake this guy with what we've got under our hood.

Superego: We should slow down a bit, before we cause someone harm, or we should be very alert to ensure we don't.

Not quite there, but you get the idea. (And, if I got my terms wrong, I'll remind you I didn't have sociology in my graduate course. :P) But what's most important is not just whether you live on the edge or not. What can change things is whether you can clearly understand what your heart says to you when you listen. And for that, I think each of us has a moral system that we build up over time. How do we build it up? My other blog tries to answer just that, but has a long way to go.

The heart, moods and... life!

(This post is dedicated to someone who had an unusual Orkut profile name, that inspired me to write this post. If you're the one and you're reading this post, you know it's you.)


The heart... the supposed source of emotion... holds a mystery within it. Actually, as we've been taught at school, it's the brain that holds the mystery. but the heart expresses it. I'm talking about the times when you feel a tickle in your chest, and you have a strong feeling that it's from your heart. A tickle that could mean many things... your heart beating fast, or your sudden noticing that your heart is beating softly.

Scientifically, we now know that there's more linking the heart and the brain than we used to think. In the sense, the heart and brain actually talk to each other, and each influences the other. No, I'm not about to talk science here. You can find that information elsewhere. I'll confine my scope to my perspective about things.

Listen to your heart. I'm sure you've heard that said so many times before. But here's some philosophy around why you should... During life, we go through our share of experiences. We start to form a sequence of one event turning into another. We take actions, and we see their results. We have people who'll support us, people who'll blame us, and people who just don't care. No matter whether what, good or bad, happens, there's only one thing that you can always be satisfied about... that you did what your heart told you, because that's the one thing that has built out of your own experience... because you had a sense of what was the best way to react. And nobody can ever promise you that they are sure what the results would have been if you had done things some other way. But always learn from your own decisions and their consequence. It'll help you when you listen to your heart the next time.

Lets your moods swing. Yes. Mood swings are nice. They're awesome. They do a lot of good to you. Every mood you go through is a mental transformation. It makes you think in a totally different way. That means you experience life itself differently. Someone who is always happy or always sad... I'd say both of them are missing a whole lot. You have one life. Live it. And the only way to live it thoroughly is to understand the beauty of contrast. The reason why you see, hear, feel anything around you, is because one thing looks, sounds, feels different from another. So you can "differentiate" between them. It's the same with moods. You go through more moods, and you know how you can enjoy one versus the other. However, don't let your moods kill your life. Moods result from experiences. And you may miss some experiences if you're not in the right mood for them. If you can experience mood swings, and not go overboard with them, that's the ideal situation. Also, keep in mind.. some moods are to be just experienced, some moods are to be shared. And some to be held within, you say? I don't know. I'd expect everything has to come into the first or the second category.

Enjoy life. I would say that's something that you should make a habit. It doesn't translate to the same as "Always be happy" or "Always be satisfied", or any other similar state. It's an emphasis of the fact that every moment is precious. At the cost of sounding like a dialogue from a very popular movie... There is no secret ingredient to life. Your life is special by the very virtue of your considering it special. That's all there is to it.

How's life and what's up?

Today, I'm going to talk about something that everyone that's met me or spoken to me will closely associate with... my typical answers to these two questions...
1) How's life?
A) Awesome, as always! (OR) Gr8, as always!

2) What's up?
A) The ceiling!!! :D (OR) The sky!!! :D

These are answers I picked up, somewhere along life, and they are not just answers, even though they remain the same every time you ask. These are statements of life. These are my two gliders. Yes, gliders is the right word. When you're sailing through the air, gliders are what you use to take you higher, to keep you at the height you're at, or when you're starting to drop, to bring yourself back up to the height that you want to be at.

These answers refresh my mind. So, the next time you've asked me one of those questions, keep in mind, you've not just made me repeat two obvious answers. You've done much more. I feel much better that you still took the care to ask me those questions.

Now, lets dig a little deeper into what those questions mean to me, and the answers. Lets start with "How's life?" Well, my life could really be any way. I could be down into the dumps, or I could be having a pretty normal life. I might be finding the work I'm doing at the moment a little mundane. Or, I could be having the best time of my life. No matter how life is for me, it really doesn't matter. If I'm throughly enjoying the moment, life is really awesome, and there you go! If life is a little on the lower side, it's just for the moment and will pass. Then life will again be awesome. Besides, you spared the time to ask me, even though I was probably walking down with my eyes focused somewhere in the air, and just managed a glance at you, and you asked! Thank you! My life is now awesome. :)

The second question is more of a pet peeve for someone who's known me for a while. Many of my colleagues find it a little boring that I've been saying the same thing for the last "n" years(Don't ask me, I've lost count!). No matter what, is does lighten their mind when I say it! To me, this answer is something that saves me from even having to search out what's really up. Coz maybe there might be times when I would be tempted to say... Err... nothing's really up right now. Everything's down. I'm going through this phase where... Oh, never mind. That's just me, really. And it's just now. So... the ceiling's up, or the sky's up, and will always be up! And hence, yes, there are plenty of things that are up, now that I come to think of it... the fan, the .... hey! I forgot! Yeah, what about that thing I did right 5 minutes back? Wow! Loads of things are up! Life rocks! Life is awesome! And, yeah, I just gave my same old reply, Lolz! But it got me feeling much better once again, right?? Yippie! Thanks, dude, for asking me that question! It was fun!

And, there lies one of the typical behaviours of Avanish answered. And maybe your key to more of my behaviour. :) Happy meetings!!!