Saturday, May 05, 2012

Broken or Mended, Trust is Trust



Scooped this from a post on Facebook from a friend.  

My response:  Melted and remolded chocolate tastes just as good as chocolate molded to its original form. That is, if the integrity of the chocolate is maintained by careful reheating and remolding... course... I guess you could just toss it out as bad rubbish too.. your choice, but I tend to prefer to conserve rather than waste, be it friends or well especially chocolate ;).

I don't necessarily disagree with it, either.  Goodness knows; trust is hard enough to place in someone's hands as it is.  I mean... you have to trust them to trust you back, y'know?  You have to give up a part of yourself that's so very vulnerable and so very personal and let someone have control of that part of you, to trust, that it's mind boggling that anyone can do that, ever. 


I see a lot of stuff like this, various places.  Almost all of them deal in absolutes.   Akin to the "mess with me and die" sentiment expressed by some.

Over the years I've heard trust expressed and discussed many times. 


Trust has to be earned, not expected from someone. 
Akin to respect, trust is.  Though like respect it's easier all around when it's reciprocated, not just expected to be placed blindly in a person who demands that you earn it from them.

Once trust is broken, well that's it then.  Right? I mean if you trust someone and they break that trust that's the end forever.  
 there are no possible circumstances that could have been a factor.  Like... you trust your loved one to come home after work every day.  And one day, they don't.  You no longer trust them.  Then, the police arrive at your door and inform you of an accident, and how your loved one did everything they could to avoid it but they couldn't and they died on the way to hospital.  Well you should just go on not trusting them after that, don't you think? I mean you TRUSTED them to come home and they didn't, end of story...
But say, they didn't die. They lived but you know, they still didn't come home after work that day.  Should you trust them then? How about if they were just delayed for hours because they stopped to help the people in the accident and you find out that they held a little girl's hand til the response team could get her free? Would you go on trusting them then?
Well not according to these popular sayings. Cause once it's gone, it's gone. There's no rebuilding it, no reforging it no earning it back.

There are far too many things that are treated as absolutes in how we deal with people. 

Sure, you need to stand for something because if you don't, you'll fall for anything.  I just worry that by promoting such absolutes we aren't teaching our kids to think for themselves.  Wouldn't it be far more productive to tell them, trust in someone till they prove a reason not to.  Far less catchy and way harder.  To do that one would have to decide what would constitute broken trust and to do that ... one would have to think ahead, make some decisions about their priorities and ... oh hell that's far too much work.

Better just to do like my mom told me to do many years ago:

Love many and trust few,
Always paddle your own canoe.

(sorry for the disjointed stream of consciousness post, but it might be all you get from me for the next while)