This is the voice of Mahatria.  Welcome to discover a new you.  Wishing you Most and More

Question:  Anand Varadhachari wants to ask this question, ‘Doubt enough till you trust once trusted stop doubting, I heard it from you so many times.  Post to an event where trust is breached, the mind starts doubting the same person, I’m not able to trust. How can I handle this?’

Ans:  Perfect question.  Think about it. When somebody has betrayed your trust everybody asked me this question, how do I wake up to another morning and trust the world again? If you don’t;  who is going to lose peace? You are going to lose your piece. 

One of the challenges of you living a peaceful life is no matter how the world behaved yesterday.  

In fact, what I say might sound even naive to this judgmental world.  A world where everything is judged, everything is opinionated, everything is doubted. 

What I suggest right now, might even sound naïve. But if you have to be naive to be peaceful in life, then I don’t mind being naïve. 

One of the greatest challenges to be peaceful in life is, independent of how the world has treated you till yesterday, you have to wake up to another morning and believe, the rest of the world is trustworthy. 

Because your peace is intertwined to your trust. The moment you start not trusting the world, you’re going to live your life in distress, and there’s no other alternative.

I am not saying everybody is good in the world. But doubting does not believe that anybody is good in the world.  You have to give them an opportunity. Become prudent.  

For example, I’ll give you a classic example.  There was a time in my life I used to travel regularly in the public transport bus, and your wallet being pick-pocketed, in a bus is a common occurrence, it can happen. 

Now just imagine of the 1000 times I would have traveled in the bus, once or twice your purse will get pick-pocketed.  Every day I traveled in the bus I keep giving a suspicious look to everybody who’s standing around me believing one of them is a pick-pocketer, and chances are 998 times out of 1000 times there was no pickpocketer in the bus; I had deprived myself of the peace all the 998 times. 

By suspecting one of the remaining five in the birth in which you are lying down in the train, can be a thief.  They will go to sleep. You will never be able to sleep.  

I’m saying, however, you are once or twice your wallet will get pickpocketed. So,  what can be done?  Become prudent. For example, I then started stitching trousers, which had a purse on the inner packet which was not accessible by the world outside.

Button your trouser pockets, so that it cannot be easily accessed. Of course, right now I have reached the height of prudence. I don’t carry money with me. I can afford to do that because there are people who take care of me wherever I go. But the point is become prudent.

Now, there must be somebody in the organization who’s not trustworthy. Suspecting everybody in the organization, as a result, you’re never going to be peaceful, and in your eyes, nobody will remain good. There will be one Nathuram Goatse in that crowd.

But there are millions of them, who had such a divine connection with Mahatma Gandhi. If, he assumed everybody maybe a Nathuram Goatse; he would have deprived himself of the peace, he could have experienced with the millions of people.

Once in a way, you might have to face the bullet. So, my advice to you would be, just because at some stage somebody has not lived up to your trust; if you do not trust anymore relationship in the future, the loser to a large extent is you and not the world.

Just because in a very close relationship, somebody had betrayed your trust. If you refuse to trust them anymore, you will have a surviving relationship, but you will not have a living relationship.

There will be no life in that relationship because where there is no trust, there can never be peace, and what is the use of a relationship which does not service your peace at all. 

So, become prudent. But also be wise, wake up to another sunrise and tell yourself with a lot of prudence but I’m going to trust the world all over one more time. I have been betrayed a few times. I have been hurt a few times. I have been exploited a few times.

Some of the ones who said the rest of my life is with you, have created you too Brutus moments in my life; and somehow I managed to wake up to another sunrise and I continue to trust everybody else in the world are trustworthy and I think the greatest beneficiary in the process, have not been the people who have stabbed me but I have been myself. Because I derive infinite peace in my life by trusting you all and I’ll always continue to.