How do I know?

How do I know when to believe someone?

When someone seems to genuinely believe what they’re saying, as they say it, it’s natural that I believe them

But what if they only believe it at that instant that they’re saying it?

What if it’s a wish or a hope? What if it’s something they wish was true rather than something that is actually true?

How do I know that?

The answer is that I can’t know it.

Even if I know the person really well, I can never know whether what they’re saying is true or not

Sometimes we have evidence that people deliberately say things to make us think or behave in a certain way. If that’s happened, obviously you’re not going to believe what they say without evidence

But we never know what is real and what is not

We never know because we’re not inside anybody else’s head

So we can’t ever know if something is genuine, or if it’s made up for one reason or another

The logical conclusion of this is that we can only trust ourselves and not anybody else

And that feels awful. We want to trust the people we think care about us

Basically, “ Trust” is a calculated risk

We need to do things because we have made the decision to do them, and not because we’re believing what someone has told us

Which is really hard because we want to believe things we are told