Trust is a privilege

Trust is a privilege

Vijay Gopichandran


Yesterday a first-year medical student accompanied me to the clinic. This student is a very intense thinker and has ideas that are sometimes very radical, rebellious and sometimes outright revolutionary! He once told me that human beings are unable to fly because we don’t think we can. If all of us sat together and decided that we can fly, then we can. He gave a very elaborate and convoluted explanation for this idea, which I still haven’t understood. I have found his questions and interventions in the classroom to be intriguing. When he asked me on Saturday whether he could accompany me, I had no hesitation in inviting him. The three hours of the train journey and the opportunities for conversation would help me understand him and his thinking.


There were many things that we spoke through the day and they were all interesting conversations. But one discussion that we had towards the end of the day, was the one about which I am going to write here. I have been thinking about that conversation for a long time and it has been one of the most intense conversations I have had in a long time now.


“Why don’t you have many friends, sir?” he asked.

“I am not socially comfortable and prefer my own company” was my response.

“Have you tried getting out of that comfort zone?”

“No, people are complex, and it gives me a lot of anxiety handling the complexities in people. I basically have problems trusting people.”

“Why don’t you trust people? Do you consider trust a weakness?”

I thought about this question briefly and said that I thought trust is a weakness.

“No sir, trust is not weakness. Trust is strength” he replied.

The discussion was getting very interesting. At this point, I must also add that this young man had very intense probing eyes and looked directly and deeply into my eyes whenever he spoke to me. I could maintain eye contact only for short spans of time and would look away. He also kept chiding me for avoiding eye contact.


Trust is the optimistic acceptance of a person’s vulnerability in the expectation that the trusted party will do whatever is in their best interest. I remembered the definition of trust that I had read and researched during my Ph.D. work and I told him that trust is exposing one’s vulnerability.

The young man now had a look of absolute resolve and he nodded his head in the negative sense and said, “Absolutely not sir. Ok, trust may be vulnerability. But vulnerability is not weakness and so trust is not weakness” This statement made me stop and think.


We were seated opposite to each other on the suburban train and were headed back to the city. There was the steady rattling sound of the train in the background. Someone was selling onion samosas and the elderly man sitting to my side bought a set for himself. The pleasant smell of deep-fried onions was titillating the olfactory receptors in my nose and I was feeling intensely hungry. Throughout the journey, I had not noticed anything around us and this pleasant smell brought me out of the conversation to the world around me. I looked back again at the student.


“You are thinking trust is this……No sir, trust is not this….. it is this….” he was saying, and gesturing with his hands. He lifted his right hand above and gestured like asking someone above for help to lift him out of a deep pit. He implied that trust is not asking someone above to pull us up. He then gestured like giving a hand-shake and indicated that trust is like sharing mutual respect, expectations, concerns, and care. When he gestured like that, it was an intense moment for me. He did not spell out the meaning. All that I have written are my interpretations. But he did not have to spell it out at all. His gestures spoke the entire story. This young man knew how to communicate his point with words, and without them. I was quiet for a few minutes. He remained quiet and respected my silence. I think respecting the silence of a person with whom we have a conversation is one of the most important conversation etiquettes and this student knew that very well.


“Do you know, my Ph.D. work was on trust in doctor-patient relationships? I researched various dimensions of trust over 4 and a half years. So, I think I do understand trust” this was me. These words came from a position of pseudo-authority over a topic which I obviously did not understand very well.

“Sir, does that mean you know everything about trust?”

Again, I had no answer to his simple, powerful and beautiful question. I just sat there smiling at him and trying to explore my own thoughts.

“Vulnerability is not weakness, sir. Vulnerability is susceptibility to being attacked or negatively impacted. But understanding and accepting our own vulnerability is a great strength and not weakness” I was astonished by what he just spoke and was speechless after that.

“I trust you blindly, sir. You can ask me anything now and I will tell you without hiding. You can ask me the most personal questions and I will surely open up to you. This is because I trust you.”

“What if I exploit your trust? How do you ensure that you are safe? Isn’t self-preservation the most important characteristic of any species?” I asked with abstract intellectualization.

“I trusted you because I think you will not exploit me. But even if you did, I take responsibility for it, because trusting you was a choice I made” he replied.


I did not continue this conversation much after this, as my station was nearing, and I had to get off the train. As I was leaving, I waved goodbye to this young man and he smiled at me and asked, “Sir, I hope you are leaving because this is your station and not because you are protecting yourself from me” His parting words kept ringing in my ears throughout my short walk back home. The night was very busy after reaching home and I did not get time to write about this.

Now, as I sit in my office, thinking back at that excellent conversation here are some of my thoughts on trust. I think trust is a great thing to have. Especially trust in the teacher, trust in the doctor, trust in a service provider, trust in a brand, trust in a shopkeeper, etc. These are socially valuable because they limit our efforts in interacting with society. Imagine having to always think and check whether the shopkeeper is a liar, whether the TV service mechanic is trying to steal some expensive parts from my TV and replace them with some cheap rip-offs. Such doubt would be an intense waste of resources and time. They will seriously limit our social intercourse. On the other hand, imagine having a highly honest, sincere, integral teacher, librarian, shopkeeper. You can trust them and engage with them without hesitation. That is why having a trustworthy physician, friend, relative is very important for health.


But trusting is not easy. It is a calculated decision. If I chose to trust someone, I am taking responsibility for that choice. For example, there is a saleswoman at my doorstep trying to sell a packet of music CDs. She says that the CDs are of high quality. However, I do not have a CD player at home at that time to test the CDs. So, with a lot of skepticism I buy the CDs. The next day when I try to play them, I find that they are all empty CDs. I wasted a thousand rupees on empty CDs which would cost me 50 rupees in any stationery shop. I feel cheated. But there is not much I can do, so I accept it and move on. Here, I chose to trust someone. The choice turned out to be bad. But I could move on. Whatever was lost because of the trust was not a serious loss. Nothing big was at stake. So trusting was easy. But imagine trusting the life of a loved one in the hands of a doctor. Your loved one is unwell. You would give your life to see your loved one become better. But the doctor whom you trusted committed negligence out of greed. That breach of trust is too expensive to just dismiss and move on. It put the life of your loved one at risk. There trust is extremely costly and risky.

Trust is largely determined by context. When I am privileged, I have everything, I have very little to lose by trusting the wrong person, then I can trust easily. I become a trusting and friendly person. When I have much at stake and when the losses that come out of the misplaced trust can ruin my life, then trust is extremely difficult.


After the short but stimulating conversation with the student, I got the opportunity to think about trust and understand it better. I now am quite clear that trust cannot be made a universal moral value. It is nice to be able to trust. But being able to trust is a privilege that not everyone has. I look forward very eagerly to more conversations and discussions with this student. Mostly, it is these young and brilliant minds that stimulate me to explore and learn more.