Om the Sacred Symbol of Hinduism
Should I Trust People? I trust people but often have to pay the price for it as well and get harmed. So should I trust people or not?
Three kinds of trust are important in life.
1. Self-confidence or trust in the self. You must have complete faith in yourself. When you have total faith and yourself and firmly believe that ‘everything good shall happen to me’, then the same starts happening in life.
2. You must have trust in the goodness of people in society and the world. This trust is also important. If you look at everyone around you with an eye of suspicion, if you keep thinking, “This person is a thief”, then I tell you, you will not be able to take even one step forward in society. Suppose you are waiting at the railway station with your luggage, and suddenly you need to go to the restroom. If you are travelling alone, then you would naturally look around you and ask someone to keep an eye on your luggage until you return from the restroom, isn’t it so? Does this not happen often at a bus stand as well?
We have to have faith in others; life does not work without it. You have to trust a doctor, a lawyer, a businessman. If you have to purchase or rent a house, then you have to trust the builder or the owner when you pay the advance rent and deposit that your money will be safe.
Similarly, you have to trust the milkman who comes to your house daily. He delivers milk to you every day with this trust that you will pay him the due amount by the end of the month. You get electric supply with this faith that you will pay the bill regularly every month. Suppose the State Electricity Board started doubting you whether you will pay the bill or not, and decides to first take the payment in advance before supplying electricity, will this work? It does not happen this way at all. First they supply the electric power to you and at the end of the month they give you the bill for the amount consumed.
Society cannot work without trust, it simply cannot. So you need to have this trust that there are many good-natured people in the society. If you do not have this trust in society or its framework, then you will have no choice but to retreat to the jungles.
3. You must have trust in the divine. You must trust that there is some supreme power by which all of life is run, by which everything in this society functions. This divine power or consciousness is all-powerful, vast and encompasses everything. You may call it by any name – whether God, or Ishwara, or Allah. Without having this trust in the divine power, you cannot experience that totality or wholeness of life.
So, without having faith in oneself you cannot move a step forward in life. Second, without having faith in society, you will not be able to live and co-exist in society. And thirdly, without having faith in the Divine, life can never be complete. It is important to have all these three kinds of faith in life.
Now this does not mean that you remain foolish or blissfully ignorant and let others fool you. You should keep your intellect alert and have awareness. Do not get stuck in ignorance or false beliefs.
Note – This is an excerpt of Sri Sri Ravishankar Guruji’s Satsang at Art of Living.