With just a few hundred rupees capital, a man from
Delhi started a business. He used to buy scraps of
cloth which he would sell from door to door. When
his business had grown somewhat, he obtained
permission to sit on the pavement in front of a shop
and sell his merchandise there.
This freelance cloth-merchant built up a good deal
of trust with his wholesaler, whom he impressed
with his honesty and fair dealing. The wholesaler
began to grant cloth on loan to the vendor, who
always made an effort to settle his debt before the
appointed date. This habit made him even more
trustworthy in the eyes of the wholesaler, who
granted him more and more cloth on loan. After just
a few years, the wholesaler was giving this streetvendor
Rs. 150,000 worth of cloth on loan, an
amount which he would not have given anybody
else except on the basis of a considerable cash down
payment.
Clearly, such a large amount of cloth could not be
accommodated on the street. The cloth-vendor now
required a shop. He bought one, and continued to
spiral, and before long he was among the leading
cloth merchants of the old city.
It is a mistake to think of money as the greatest
asset in life. The greatest asset is trust. On the basis
of trust one can buy anything. What one lacks in
other departments he can make up for in trust.
Trust is an invaluable asset which can buy even
more than money.
But the way to establish trust is not by repeating
how trustworthy one is. No, it is by acting in a
trustworthy manner. The outside world is very
severe in this regard. Unless one proves one’s
trustworthiness by impeccable actions, one cannot
expect to receive the benefit of the doubt. Only if
one consistently shows oneself worthy of trust over
a long period, as the cloth vendor showed himself
in his dealings with the wholesale merchant, will
one be accorded trust in this world (117:7).
Ref - The Moral Vision
- by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
