Circles of Trust....

 

It is always a tough choice to make, when we wish to understand who in our lives can be trusted upon, and whom do we have to be careful about. Today, I wish to present my argument and a method which will be helpful to understand and to space people in our life accordingly. 

My concept of belief and trust is a continuous process of placing people in our lives in a certain circle of trust, depending on our experiences...as and when we encounter them. We have four circles of trust to accommodate everyone we know,  strangers...new acquaintances, new people in our life enjoy membership to this circle of trust, then we have trend based friends...trend here means a particular phase in our life, while at certain workplace, certain school of study... we make friends, who we know better compared to people who are strangers, but we are not completely comfortable with them to enjoy a greater rapport, they come in this range. The next circle of trust is good friends..friends whom we grow with as a person and whom we have come to believe in....and finally, core group.. family and other significant people in our lives occupy this circle.  As I said, no position is permanent, and we always understand and grow as a person...as and when we realize or understand someone in a better way, they will either continue to enjoy the same circle of trust, or move to a different circle depending on whether our learning about them is positive or negative. 

I wish to discuss how people belonging to these circles can be understood, and identified...strangers  represent outside world, they are influenced by competition and our personality.. they always tend to pull us down by being negative in their remarks....as we move into the trend based friends circle... these people tend to be generic support function...people who will have no real benefit or loss, when we win or when we lose..they enjoy the protocol principle of being polite and positive.. they support with a word of encouragement when we are depressed and a congratulatory message when we win.. it means nothing to them.... people in good friends circle tend to be critical in their view, they hold us when we are unrealistic, they tend to guard us against arrogance, they will be negative in their view and try to present the other side of the coin, so that we will be cautious and take the right decision...Finally, people in the core group support you even when you cheat on them, hurt them..they stand by you during your toughest times, even when you hurt them  badly....speak about the brighter side of life...to instill in you faith and confidence... 

On any given day, it is not bad to lose someone from the stranger or the trend based friends circle....probably painful to let go a true friend....but to lose someone who stood by you even when you hurt/treated them  badly ....I shall not consider myself worthy to live anymore, because I believe one can keep his billions only if he is careful about his pennies...I shall rather die... 

P.S.:  I treat everyone with the respect they truly deserve...

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This post is a part of the talk by Abhijith Jayanthi at Ghana in 2009. It has been modified into a commentary to include explanations needed. © Copyrights Reserved.