Trust

You may be deceived if you trust too much,

but you will live in torment unless you trust enough.

Frank Crane

ANITA

I am writing this article because something happened to me recently that made me think about trust and what it really means in our lives. It made me think how vulnerable we are when we have to make our decisions. (In my case the upsetting part is that I tried to trust in someone despite of my intuition.) Every one of us has been, is or will be at some stage in a situation when trust is broken. It can be as little as a white lie that turns out to affect us deeper than it was intended or it can be as big as trusting in our political leaders that they keep our individual needs and well-being in mind when they make their decisions or even become a victim of such decisions.

Trust by definition is a prediction of reliance on an action, based on what a party knows about the other party. Trust is a statement about what is otherwise unknown -- for example, because it is far away, cannot be verified, or is in the future.

Trust is a choice and we should use it wisely. There are people that trust blindly in anything and everything they hear and experience and there are others that live in paranoia because they can not trust anyone or anything. What is better?

If you follow what is happening in the world today, trust becomes an issue. Politicians deceive us on a daily basis, corruption is blooming in every corner of the Planet and very often it seems to be supported by governments. And in our private lives we all experience dishonesty and disrespect towards each other that can easily grow to legal disputes but even the law that supposed to protect the honest and innocent seems to rather support the deceivers.

But if we allow our leaders to set deception as a “standard” what can we expect from the “little man”? The example is there in front of us every day; we all watch television, listen to the radio, read news papers or the internet. Some of us might think that if George W. Bush can attack Iraq killing many innocent citizens then anyone can kill anybody that he/she wants and can get away with it… this is of course a bit far fetched example but the question remains: What justifies one person’s actions (regardless of his/her position) and restricts another from doing it? Are we suspiciously heading towards that “George Orwellian” famous “Seventh Commandment” in the Animal Farm: "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others"? (Our leaders already successfully adopted the “Sixth Commandment” of the above-mentioned classic: "No animal shall kill another animal without cause"). Maybe it is in someone’s best interest to confuse us, to divide our focus from what is really happening, or to cover up something. Or maybe it is human nature…

Our trust is manipulated and influenced in every level of our lives. We tend to ignore the ones that are affecting our lives indirectly (or we believe they have no direct influence on us) and care more about the ones that we experience directly. A very good example of this is my own neighbour who is so upset about the petrol prices going up and blames our government’s incompetence for it but supports George W. Bush in any move he makes. We easily say that we do not trust this or that person because he/she did something that cost us money or had any other undesirable effect on us but we still easily justify an Afghanistan or Iraq because we trust it is for our own protection…

It is one of the oldest tricks in the book that politicians appeal to people’s religious believes to gain their trust (and of course their votes, as much as it counts now-a-days’ so called democratic elections…). Many wars were fought in the name of one or another God. People support religious reasoning without second thought BUT what if your God is defeated in the “battle”? You won’t believe/trust in Him anymore? You loose your faith? You turn to another God? NO… Most likely the above-mentioned politicians (probably highly supported by religious leaders) will explain to you that what happened must have happened in this way to fulfil a prophecy of some kind...and your belief/trust is restored...
Another good example is the “WAR AGAINST TERRORISM”. It sounds like it is for our protection but who is the enemy here? We should trust in our leaders that they can unmistakeably identify and eliminate those whom intention is to harm mankind. We all support this idea till we experience on our own skin what it means to become a suspect. You might have different opinion from your government and you find yourself “stamped” as a terrorist any time.

So the question remains: what is better? Trust unconditionally or doubt everything? Of course the logical answer would be to find the golden middle way but are we capable of doing it under the current circumstances? Most of us are too comfortable to think for ourselves. It is so convenient to trust in anything that is “dished” for us and accept that there are “more clever” people amongst us that know what is best for us even if deep inside we know it is indeed NOT the best for us. Or the opposite: some of us live in constant fear of deception, we doubt the intentions of other people towards us, and we question anything and everything that happens around us or with us, we make false assumptions, we “see” traps behind everything. Either way we become victims of some kind of delusion…

Is there a solution? Will the world become a place where our trust is honoured with honesty and good-doing? I doubt it but we must keep in mind that we always HAVE a choice…We can choose to seek the TRUTH before we blindly accept anything and everything that is presented to us. By becoming more aware of what is happening around us we are able to make better choices.