I’ve wanted to write about trust for some time now. Even though I’ve talked briefly about it previously, I find it a difficult topic to truly grasp. In short, trust is putting your faith in something. We trust that our cars will start every morning to get us to work on time. We trust a specific tool for a specific job. We trust that the sun will always rise in the east and set in the west. All of these things are constant, we have repeated the action enough to believe in the result. Now there is a shelf life for trust in the material world. If a tool breaks we replace it, the original has lost the trust we placed in it. If the car breaks we trust our mechanic to fix it. IF it breaks again we may get a new car or we may get a new mechanic; both of these are judgments of trust.
Trust is always a judgment - good or bad. We depend on a number of variables to inform how much we trust. The fewer the variables, the easier and more willing we are to trust. So a tool we can judge and trust based on the materials it was made from and the experience we have with it. A person, however, is far more complex and volatile.
We gauge trust in a person on our interaction with them, but there’s something we do even before we interact - we allow ourselves some measure of vulnerability. This initial vulnerability is what sparks a chance at trust. What is vulnerability? It is allowing another a chance to see a portion of your inner self. We accept that we may be judged when doing this, and if we are not we feel accepted and can begin to build trust with someone new!
When we’re children we learn to trust our parents immediately because we are not yet aware of what judgment is. Broken trust from child to parent is often the most hurtful because of this. Parent child trust relationships are difficult for another reason: while an adult may guard their vulnerability, only letting a new person see what they want them to; a child begins purely vulnerable and innocent, then learns to hide their inner self. So a child will begin to build walls around their “self,” even if the parent has done nothing to breach their trust. On the other hand, because parents are so intimately familiar with their children, they will often reveal a child’s vulnerability without even realizing it.
Eventually we realize, usually after some disgruntled teen years, that our parents are learning right along with us and they shouldn’t be punished for loving us to the best of their ability.
Trust in romance can be very difficult as well. It begins just like any new encounter, except for a funny thing called attraction. When we’re attracted to someone, we’re often willing to make that vulnerability leap very quickly. We may reveal too much and feel foolish, or we may have been burned by the opposite sex enough times in the past that we are unwilling to make that first leap of vulnerability. Some of you may even be like me and do both! I’ve had a very hard time approaching women because of how hurt I’ve been in the past. Then when I finally do take that initial leap of vulnerability I end up punishing myself for the things I chose to say (see that? not only a lack of trust but self-judgment as well).
So what are the common themes in trust? Vulnerability, fear of judgment, and interaction. If any one of these breaks down trust is impossible. If a significant other stops interacting, we begin to question the relationship and trust is damaged. If a friend tells us our idea is stupid, we may trust them less—or even worse, trust ourselves less. The end result is we are less willing to make the initial leap of vulnerability and reach out to others. Reaching out to people is so important, none of us want to feel alone in the world and we use trust as a bridge to connect us. Fore what is trust other than faith in our fellow man? It’s no wonder we have so little faith in the world when we feel we can’t even trust our friends, family and neighbors!
The old things, the things we have wanted to trust in for so long - like Church and Government - have lost the trust of the people long ago. In truth these are just things, things with honest and good intentions, things with people who want nothing more than to do good in the world. Individuals are imperfect and can do a myriad of things to break our trust. Our goal should be Christ-like, to love flawed people and forgive their trespasses against us, fore only through and encouraged by love are people willing to make the leap of vulnerability and connect with their fellow man.
In the end trust in organizations is tantamount to idol worship. Not the individuals within the organization, but the idea that the organization is an entity unto itself. The real lesson from trust comes down to faith. Faith in God, the Universe, energy or our place in the collective unconscious mind. When we have faith , we believe that our world is working through us and through others. That those who hurt us were put in our path to learn something from us, and us from them. So be vulnerable! Love thy self, then you can truly love thy neighbor!
