Return to Innocence

A couple of days ago, a friend of mine shared her concern that maybe she's too innocent for the world.  Someone at work had warned her that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and someone might just make her a scapegoat if she trusts everyone, and she started wondering in what ways might people cheat her.

That warning might sound like common sense to us.  But I feel actually disturbed to realize that we find sense in being skeptical and distrusting people.

Actually, we must realize that this distrust is probably the worst feeling a human can have.  This distrust has killed millions in the past century alone - Stalin with his paranoia of even his own partymen, Hitler with Jews, and Mao with every intellectual in China.  It is not only stupid, but quite dangerous and destructive to distrust.  And it is quite contrary to our own natural instinct.

I think we were designed to be innocent, right from birth.  Babies do not know doubt.  They do not seem to worry who might hurt them, and go to anyone who radiates love and entertains them.  Not many babies end up getting cheated and hurt, do they?  We all know that babies mean no harm to us and have no hidden agenda to screw us.  Their innocent coos and smiles can only make us happy.  So our conscience prevents us from even thinking of hurting them.

We, foolish adults, ask them to unlearn this innocence, which keeps them happy and even protects them.  And then we teach them that the world is a nasty place and they'd be fools to continue trusting people.  

I strongly believe that we will not go wrong if we choose to lead lives of innocence.  Though this might take some effort initially.

Given that we're adults and not cute babies, there is a decent chance that someone may try to screw us, and their conscience might not try hard enough to stop them at first.  But that is when we should have the wisdom and maturity to tell them what they did was wrong, forgive them for it (infinite times if needed), and then trust them again.

Faith in God is also something that can help us maintain innocence.  First, God (as per most religions) has awesome abilities, including inspiring our thoughts, helping us through difficult times (generally cuz it's he who creates them for some purpose), etc..  So if someone screws us, it's just part of some plan, and we should take it easy.  Another way of looking at it is that God programmed us with innocence when we entered the world, so innocence is what we were meant to have.  Sure, we try to format that out, but his programming of our conscience at least tends to sustain longer.  We need to have faith that he maintains the same conscience in the people around us; nobody is intrinsically mean.  We need to have faith that he means well, and so will inspire only the right thoughts in people, so long as we follow our conscience and always intend well.

It may take a while for people to see the baby-ish innocence in us.  But when we keep trusting them and keep trying to do the right things, they will love us and respect us and care for us.  They will feel good and confident about themselves because we trusted them.  They will feel a sense of responsibility as they realize that we depend on them.  In process, we are strengthening their conscience, and tomorrow, we might even end up inspiring them to become innocent again.

As you can see, innocence demands some effort and a lot of character.  But it will make us feel good.  It will make the people we trust feel good.  And it will make the world around us beautiful in a sustainable way.

So let us resolve to love and trust people around us, like babies do.  Let's resolve to be innocent again!

:)