Remember the perfect, amazing, super software you recently obtained which you believe to be God’s reply to all your prayers? How it can do everything you want it to do, and more?
Except that …
… every time you open a Visual Studio project in parallel, your PC grumbles like the ancient fan in your father’s room?
You tell yourself it does not matter that the super-awesome software consumes all the RAM the poor PC is capable of squeezing out. The solution is at hand: while the cool, new software is running, just don’t open any other application which requires a large amount of memory. Simple!

Amazing how most of our problems are solved by ‘adjustment’.

Like the problem of trusting someone. First you trust them with your eyes closed. You believe that if you’re good to folk, they have no option but to be good back to you too. Then one day you suspect that they’re gnawing at the firm foundation you’d carefully built up. Once the grain of doubt is planted, there is no looking back. Worse, one day you get an evidence that they were misusing your trust all along.

More often that not, you are not even aware that there is something called trust between you and another, till it breaks. You’ve just not perceived it in those terms till then. Normally, it isn’t easy for trust to shatter – it often tries to save itself by cushioning the fall. But the nastier the fall, the worse it crumbles.

The Adjustment Factor steps in then. You realise that they had been taking you for a ride or two. Nonetheless, you hesitate before dropping the final bombshell. For one thing, you can’t muster enough courage – you fear a confrontation may destroy forever what were mere cracks. Your baseless assumption is that the cracks could be glued together. For another, breaking apart means you no longer will have access to a lot of things that made your life convenient. You choose to be prudent. I will adjust a little. After all, good things do come at a price.

The ones that lied.
The ones that stole.
The ones that cheated.
The ones that pretended.

Little by little, you stop trusting people. Once bitten,…

You close your eyes. You bite your lips. You pretend it never happened.
You wish you hadn’t seen it or known it – there was peace in ignorance.