Children are very straightforward. They are almost binary. They don’t have an issue in saying ‘No’. They may have a toy they cherish and they won’t let another child use it. They don’t worry about things like ‘what will that kid feel if I say No’ or ‘if I say No and I go to their home and they also say No when I want to play with their toy’ etc.
These are very twisted and complex thoughts almost creating the science behind Game Theory. Adults are good at this. And they seem to be only doing this all the time in their heads. The Adult world is awfully complex.
When a person says ‘It’s incredible’ at the painting you show them, you immediately ask ‘really’ to confirm it. We cannot go by mere words. That ‘incredible’ can have 50 shades of grey from ‘Ouch what an awful painting’ to ‘I have nothing to say about it’ to ‘You were never kind to me’ and more.
Adults mostly go by data. They keep asking you on various occasions. They see you seeing other paintings and watch your words. Then with some Bayesian inference they know the probability of truth in your utterances. They have this ‘trust’ meter running in their heads all the time.
Just see how complex things get as you grow.
This complexity becomes completely unpredictable with bigger things. Running a company or a college, running a country is all way too complex. There is a lot of data to process to make your probability computation accurate. And it breaks all the inferences.
Adults handle this by a mantra called ‘trust’. When data can no longer serve any purpose, we begin to ‘trust’ or rather it is a very clever way of creating an ‘expectation’ or some kind of ‘promise’ on the other person or sometimes on the other nation. This scales really well.
This ‘trust’ expectation creates a binding on the other person to behave in a certain way. When I tell my milk maid that the milk is watery, I let her know my expectation that I need the milk to be better. It implicitly conveys that I will trust her more if she can improve the quality of the milk.
In every act of ours, we are adjusting this trust meter by seeing the actions and asking them to refine the outcome. We align with folks who align with our conditions. We form trust groups. We can easily do things inside these bubbles. Outside of it, we begin to collect data, do inference, when we cannot, we bind them by ‘trust’ expectations and work our way.
A child does not have the brain to handle this. It is simple in what it does and it does not have any expectation on others. It is mostly handling itself all the time. Many a time we want other adults to be like a child. ‘Give me a straight answer’ you hear yourself talking to your wife or a friend.
Especially to your near and dear, it is very hard. They are not bothered about your ‘trust’ expectations. They are not here to buy and sell things from you. They are by default in your ‘trust’ group. If you start applying ‘trust’ expectations on them, they get annoyed. It can even lead to relationships getting broken. The only expectation they have is you blindly trust them. Love has to be blind.
Thus love supersedes all ‘trust’ expectations and adjustments. A mother’s love for her child is unconditional. True love is unconditional. The closest of your friends or relations, love has to be unconditional. Love is the highest trust you have on someone. If you love someone truly, you trust them the highest. Ironically, you no longer need to trust them. You place them beyond this ‘trust’ expectation. You just stop caring about their actions or words. You see yourself free in their presence and so do they.
To truly love someone, therefore, you need to not have any conditions imposed on them. This means, their actions or words do not have any negative impact on you that forces you to begin setting ‘trust’ expectations on them. Instead, you are mostly ‘forgiving’, ‘accepting’ things as they are, just like the way a mother may do for her child.
Ironically, you don’t even forgive yourself if you do something wrong. You go the opposite with you. You try to make you perfect. And when things don’t work your way, you punish yourself by letting yourself in that state of mind, sad and grumpy. That’s your way of punishing yourself. Most of us are unnecessarily hard on ourselves. When you cannot let yourself go or when you cannot accept your flaws, how will you accept others flaws ?
Unless you love yourself, you cannot love others.
It appears like the arrow is always pointing towards you.
I will leave you with this beautiful poetry by William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
The link below has a very beautiful explanation on this if you care to go further.
Child is the father of Man
In this writeup, the following that is stated is quite profound and put beautifully as well:
- True love is unconditional.
- Unless you love yourself, you cannot love others.
- Most of us are unnecessarily hard on ourselves.
- When you cannot let yourself go or when you cannot accept your flaws, how will you accept others' flaws?
I cannot agree more!
However, the other aspects outlined in this write-up are not really related to 'trust' or 'love'. For instance, the following is quoted:
- When a person says "It’s incredible" at the painting you show them, you immediately ask ‘really’ to confirm it. We cannot go by mere words. That ‘incredible’ can have 50 shades
Why is this complex and not a simple straightforward binary Yes/No? It is because the subject matter is such! A painting has a lot of characteristics. It may not be out of place to quote from the English artist William Blake, who lived from 1757 until 1827: "He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars; General Good is the plea of the hypocrite and flatter; For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars". A great painting has so many 'particulars' that it is beyond a simple Yes/No.
When you say 'Adults mostly go by data', you are cynical about it since you are referring to the 'trust' meter running in their heads all the time. However, let us not worry about the pretentious adults, since you cannot do anything about them. Let us worry about honest adults, and ask them 'what are the characteristics and particulars that constitute your answer'. You will get the 50 shades of grey - and there is value in it since it reflects their understanding!
I really liked this article. Very nicely put! However, I have some critical observations/comments that I want to share with you, which I will post later here. Meanwhile, I wanted to write about the poem (by the same title) by William Wordsworth that you have listed in the end.
I am very fond of his poems. He is a great nature poet, and one of the best English romantic poets. But, when it comes to using the words religion, piety, bliss - he uses it very loosely; in my personal opinion, he lacks depth in these matters and sounds somewhat hollow. Also, see the critical analysis of William Wordsworth's work and his poems by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose details I have enclosed below:
Work: "Biography Literaria", by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Link: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6081/6081-h/6081-h.htm
Critical essay: entire Chapter XXII
The relevant extract of the criticism: "... Fifth and last; thoughts and images too great for the subject. This is an approximation to what might be called mental bombast, as distinguished from verbal: for, as in the latter there is a disproportion of the expressions to the thoughts so in this there is a disproportion of thought to the circumstance and occasion. ...
It is a well-known fact, that bright colours in motion both make and leave the strongest impressions ..., may become the link of association in recalling the feelings and images that had accompanied the original impression. But if we describe this in such lines, as
"They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude!" (from the poem "Daffodils")
in what words shall we describe the joy of retrospection, when the images and virtuous actions of a whole well-spent life, pass before that conscience which is indeed the inward eye: which is indeed "the bliss of solitude?" Assuredly we seem to sink most abruptly ... from this couplet to—
"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils." (from the poem "Daffodils")
As an aside, William Wordsworth in his later became a very 'practical' man, and a man of the world, and gave a cold shoulder to an eager young romantic poet John Keats who came and showed him some of his most imaginative poems hoping for encouragement, appreciation, and maybe some recognition.