How are trust and expectation related? Can we love without trust?
By trusting someone, aren’t we give the key to our happiness to that person?
Answer Podcast:
Transcript
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what is trust and how is trust related to expectation and if it is true expectation is that trust right or wrong and if there is expectation is that trust right or wrong actually trust and expectation are naturally related with each other trust means that when we understand that a particular person is of a particular nature or I will start with trust in simple sense let’s say we are sick and we go to a doctor and then I say I trust the doctor that means this doctor has given me this medicine and I believe that this doctor is intelligent enough expert enough to have understood my disease properly and has prescribed the right medicine so their trust means that we value that person’s intelligence and accept that person’s guidance its trust in that sense so basically there is some foundational expectation that this doctor will guide me properly there is trust in that so similarly in a day to day sense of relationships say when one debtor when one person gives a loan to someone else I trust that you will repay the loan then naturally whenever there is trust there is expectation that person will behave in a particular way when say two people get married there is expectation that both of them will be faithful to each other that is trust and there is breach of trust that happens it can happen in a financial relationship marital relationship in a political setting between two countries where a certain kind of behavior is expected and when that behavior is not done say there are trust documents that are signed when somebody takes an oath of office with their national secrets you can’t reveal if you reveal them then that means trust means that there is a certain expectation of behavior which if it is not done then the trust is violated or the trust is betrayed so trust and expectation naturally relate to each other and how is trust developed it is by consistent appropriate behavior how do we trust someone sometimes we may trust someone out of sentiment quite often when there is a relationship that is formed primarily based on infatuation then we may not really consider the character of the person the nature of the person and we just fall into that relationship but that trust can often turn out to be harmful to us but if a person is there is consistent appropriate behavior as expected in the relationship in that particular relationship then that person is considered trustworthy so now there is trust and expectation are naturally related to each other so we all need trustworthy relationships for example if we have something burdening our heart and we want to share it with someone and that person can’t keep a confidence can’t keep a secret we speak something confidential that person broadcast it to the whole world that will be very embarrassing or mortifying for us at times so we need trustworthy relationships so basically when we are trusting others better say even by observing their consistent behavior, good behavior we are indirectly or directly giving our key of happiness into that person’s hand and there is no certainty that that person is going to behave the same way until he or she is with us because I keep changing every now and then depending upon my experiences so eventually I keep changing from my childhood till now I have changed a lot and I don’t know whether it is benefiting the person who is staying with me or I don’t know whether the people around me are benefiting or liking that change so basically if I am trusting others or if I am you know have some expectation on others even though by observing their consistent behavior am I giving my key of happiness to that person so if he is going to change his behavior after a while and that creates some inconsistency in his behavior and if I personally don’t like it I won’t be happy is that how trust should be so there is something going on here I don’t understand yeah that’s true see to some extent when we trust someone naturally that we are we can open ourselves to hurt because we may observe a person as you said the person may change the person may behave in a way which we didn’t expect and which we couldn’t have predicted also based on past observation so one thing about life is that at a material level life does not come with any guarantee where to speak of trust in a relationship in any activity right now we are sitting in this roof in this house nobody can guarantee that this roof will not fall down on us chance of it happening is low but still builder cannot guarantee that this roof will not fall down so in fact when we go if we have to do a surgery many times doctors ask us to sign a disclaimer that I am doing this surgery by my own will and I know the risks and I won’t sue the doctor if things go wrong so without trust we can’t even take one step in life we can’t do anything at all without trust yeah I’ll come to that can we love without trust there are loves of different kinds when a mother loves a child that doesn’t mean that the mother will trust the child with a knife or the mother will trust the child to go close to fire so there are different kinds of love and according to the particular love that form of love there is there is trust within that so the mother understands that the child is not intelligent enough right now and I have to protect the child but then as the child grows up if the mother tries to hold on to the child a child who is say 15 years old in the same way as say 6 months old, it’s not possible so the dynamics of the relationship are going to change and sometimes when the parents give freedom to the children, trust the kids kids may go wrong but then they have to learn their lessons so if parents say that we don’t know whether our kids will learn the lessons right we will not have any kids only then there is without taking that risk there is no joy of parenting and so there is a risk which is there always in relationships what we can do is do our best so we don’t form history relationships we don’t give trust easily but doubt Shrimad Bhagwatam says that doubt is a sign of intelligence among 5 characteristics of intelligence one is doubt but important is doubt is not the only sign of intelligence doubt doubt can tell us what is wrong doubt can direct our attention this may be wrong but doubt can never tell us what is right if we are always going to hold on to doubt then we will not be able to form any relationship with anyone we will not be able to we will not be able to study anything for example now with the internet available every scientific theory that we study there are critics of that theory and there are people who allege conspiracy theories oh this whole thing is a hoax and we will not be able to study even scientific knowledge so trust is required but what is to be avoided is both uncritical trust as well as uncritical skepticism we just trust anyone and everyone and we just doubt anyone and everyone so ultimately we use our god given intelligence and take some steps forward and if those steps don’t work out right we correct course it’s not that anything in life has to be irrevocable that particular state may be irrevocable but we can always change course it’s said that in an airplane say if an airplane is going from LA to Detroit or LA to New York it is said that actually for 90% of the time the airplane is off course then how does it get to the destination because although the airplane is off course, the pilot keeps getting back on course because of the atmospheric disturbances because of wind conditions, because of cloud conditions the aircraft keeps going off course and we keep getting back on course so like that we put trust in relationships and sometimes we may find that there is a deviation in the course correction and we keep moving forward does that address your question? any other questions?