Trust

Trust.  It's a difficult concept, even for the best of us.  It can be so hard to give it and so easy to take it away.  Or do I have it backwards?  It's so easy to give trust and so difficult to take it away?

Which do you think it is?

Is trust earned?

Some people believe that trust is something you earn by.. well... being trustworthy.  If you do what you say you are going to do, that earns you some trust.  If you do the things that need to be done without being coerced, that also could earn you some trust.  For that matter, if you DON'T do things to mess things up, that might also earn you some trust.

Would you have trusted that Mrranda (the cat) would not have decided to walk on your head or use it to jump up to the roof edge?  If you know cats, you might not.  If you knew Mrranda, you... might not.  But, if you knew Mrranda and how she interacted with the farmers, you could see why Tammy extended that trust.

Mrranda, on the other hand, was not sure she trusted Tammy to get the painting job done correctly, so she supervised.  After all, that's what the Farm Supervisory Crew does.

But, the question remains - is there some sort of magical formula that, if we follow it, we can earn the trust of others?

If trust is earned, why are we so eager to take it away?

I suspect you, like everyone else, can point to times in your life where you lost trust in someone, or someone lost their trust in you.  Often, the event that resulted in that loss of trust is quite traumatic.  Perhaps, in those cases, it is only natural that a person should re-evaluate how much trust another should be given.

But, if you believe trust is earned over time, shouldn't it take a significant failure to result in the removal of all trust?  I am certainly not saying that you can't be so shocked by an action or a revelation that your trust will be badly shaken and that maybe you now see enough of that person that you might want to trust less.  What I am saying is that it seems like people are willing to revoke their trust quickly over fairly small and inconsequential episodes - making a mountain out of a molehill (so to speak).

If you believe trust is earned, then I feel you should not be so willing to revoke that trust over things that should not carry that much weight.  Unless the truth is....

We're too willing and too quick to trust?

People do not like to be uncomfortable.  We want to figure out if someone, or something, is good or bad.  Useful or not useful.  Trustworthy or... not.

The longer it takes for us to determine whether someone or something is worthy of our trust, the more uncomfortable we become.  We want to know where things stand and we want everything to be in their nice little boxes.  So, I wonder if we too often use some of the worst measurements to determine if someone is worthy of trust.  And then we grant it.  Only to yank it back the moment a small revelation shows us that this person or group isn't EXACTLY what we projected them to be.

And we're too willing to distrust?

For all of the same reasons, we are quick to determine that we will NOT trust certain people or groups, simply by looking at the labels they carry with them.

Cat - can't be trusted to be on the ladder behind your head while you are painting.

Lawyer - can't be trusted.

My apologies to all of the lawyers (all one of them) that might read my blog.  I apologize because lawyers are very often the butt of jokes just like this one.  It's too easy to get everyone (except the lawyer) to laugh at this example - and unfortunately, it is also too easy to get too many people to agree that no lawyer should EVER be trusted.

And yet, when you need one, you go get one - because you find you actually have to extend a little trust to get something important done.

Perhaps some of the difficulty here is that we need to learn how to trust ourselves to evaluate what we, ourselves, are good at - and what we are NOT good at.  Then we need to find those people who we can trust who are good at those things we are not good at.

Trust or abdication of responsibility?

I actually wonder sometimes if we are willing to offer up trust to certain things as a way to abdicate from the responsibility of taking the time to actually learn and go through the experience of discomfort.  It seems as though the process of earning trust AND the act of granting someone the opportunity to earn your trust is undervalued and misunderstood.

I am not saying we should trust everyone and everything until we learn otherwise, nor am I saying we should automatically mistrust every new person, group or thing.  I am saying that we need to learn to be ok with not being certain.  And I am saying that we might have to be ok with different levels of trust over time.

So, what got me started on this?  Well, let me share some questions with you - and then I'm going to sign off for today.  I don't want to hear your answers and I will not share mine (at least for a time).  I'd rather we all just explored how we feel about them for now.

• Do you trust your dentist to recommend the right actions to protect your teeth?
• Do you trust your dentist to ask you what you want and give you choices?
  
• Do you trust your best friend to be kind to you - even if the thing they need to do is not nice?
• Do you trust the mechanic to fix your car?
• Do you trust your mechanic to charge you a fair price?
• Do you trust the person you identify as a spiritual advisor to listen to you and not pass judgement?
• Do you trust your spiritual advisor to know when they need to just listen and NOT advise?
  
• Do you trust your local government?
• Would you trust your local government if someone you knew and liked was in that local government?
• Would you trust your local government if YOU were in that local government?
• If you signed up for a class, would you trust the instructor to help you to learn the subject you signed up for?
• Do you trust the institution that offers this class to find a qualified instructor to teach that class?
• Do you trust a teacher to help your child to learn?
• Would you trust that teacher more if you found out they had gone to school to learn how to teach and continued to take classes so they can continue to learn new ways to teach well?
• Is it easier to trust a teacher you know personally?  Is it easier to distrust if you don't know that teacher at all?
• Would you trust the teacher more or less if you knew your local government was telling the teacher what to do?
• Would you trust your dentist to teach your spiritual advisor how to run for office so they can tell your teachers how to teach children better?

Ok. That last one was to relieve some tension.  

Think about trust for a while.  I know I will.