Life calls it being deceived and the strange thing is that almost everyone has experienced it many times, because people have superpowers to self-delude that "this time will be different". American speaker John Gray once said: "If someone deceives me for the first time, shame belongs to him. If there is a second time, shame belongs to me". It's heartbreaking but it's true that the first time we are victims, the second time we have become accomplices of innocence.
Like my friend, from the age of twenty to thirty, he was regularly rejected by three girls with a template: "I only consider you as an older brother", to the point that friends had to ask him how many more families he intends to be an older brother. Or another friend who is passionate about investing, every year falls into the trap of a "thousand-year-on-one opportunity" from virtual currency to land plots, every time he loses money he swears "this is the last lesson", and then six months later he is disillusioned with gullibility. Multi-level marketing scammers, technology criminals or ex-lovers do not need new tricks, they just need to hit the self-esteem of victims who always think they are exceptions. A smart person is not someone who has never been deceived, but someone who knows how to pay tuition once and then graduate, instead of paying money forever and not wanting to graduate.
Bitterly, the older we get, the more easily we fall into traps, not because we are less intelligent, but because we are too confident in experience. Old fish often get hooked because they think they know all kinds of hooks, forgetting that fishermen also get old and bait is always renewed. Of course, living with suspicion of everything is no different from being bitten by mosquitoes and then deciding to hate it all summer. The problem is not losing faith, but having to increase memory, remember signs, remember empty promises and remember old shame.
Life can forgive gullible people, but rarely forgive those who intentionally forget. If you are deceived for the first time, consider it tuition fees; the second time, review your transcript; and the third time still using the old trick, then the problem is no longer with the scammer. It lies in blind faith in what you want to believe. The most dangerous magician is not the opponent, but you, who have voluntarily stepped into your own illusion.
