"Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time."
Arthur Ashe
I could not formulate a better philosophy about trust then the one stated above. Many times people thing that trust is something automatically given, but in my opinion, trust should not be expected off the bat. In our day and age people are always "creeping on a come up" and looking for ways to get over one another. Manipulation and usury are on the menu with healthy servings of each as the daily specials. We have all heard stories about how one person "stole" their best friend's lover or how somebody purposely pretended to be something other than what he or she really was in order to dupe their "victim". Yet, when we hear these stories they rarely phase us--unless of course there is some type of bizarre twist. You know why that is? It's because we know folk are shady out here. We know that it would be foolish to go around trusting folk all willy nilly. The stories we hear teach us that "trust has to be earned" and our own personal experiences reiterate this wisdom.
We also learn through life that trust is bestowed on a person as an honor once that person has shown himself/herself to be trustworthy. It is not given by virtue of association or relationship. Sad to say, it is often not given by virtue of sex or intimacy (assuming that the two are generally related). Trusting someone means that you believe this person to be dependable because he has proven, over a period of time, that his word is his bond. Trusting also means that you have faith in someone because she has shown you that she has your back through the muck and mire of life. Unfortunately, there is no "how to" formulaic approach to learning whether or not someone is reliable and trustworthy. Conferring trust on a person is situational because one never really knows when the time will come for her to know if the people in her life are simply all talk. However, there are telltale signs that pop up rather quickly that may let us know that a person is not that trustworthy. And when the time arises for "care" to be put to the test, either bonds are thickened or bonds are broken (or need to be).
Although trust is not automatically given by virtue of a relationship (barring healthy familial ties where trust should be automatic)the dissolution of a relationship or disengagement from a situation is almost always automatic when trust is broken, and it is damn hard to undo this. Sometimes we notice a person is slowly backing out of an association, choosing to stay around but remain aloof and emotionally distant, or producing/strengthening a proverbial barricade. This is because the person perceives that the "trust" that was hoped for, barely got off the ground in some cases, or once was has been violated.
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you”
(Friedrich Nietzsche). Whether or not its lying or some other act of infidelity (men looking at other women when out with their women, women catering to male friends to the chagrin of their partners, secretive and suspect behavior, etc...) the potential for complete and utter trust is compromised. It seems to make sense that if people value the folk in their lives they want to build trust instead of destroy even the possibility of it with destructive patterns of behavior. Now, if selfishness and usury are the intentions instead of building and growing in the first place, then none of this matters. And if a person has significant trust issues and projects all past experiences onto new experiences, so that each new person looks suspect, then none of this matters at all.
One thing is for sure, though,in order to have healthy relationships you have to have faith and trust--among a few other things--and that comes over time when people really want to nurture it.
Arthur Ashe
I could not formulate a better philosophy about trust then the one stated above. Many times people thing that trust is something automatically given, but in my opinion, trust should not be expected off the bat. In our day and age people are always "creeping on a come up" and looking for ways to get over one another. Manipulation and usury are on the menu with healthy servings of each as the daily specials. We have all heard stories about how one person "stole" their best friend's lover or how somebody purposely pretended to be something other than what he or she really was in order to dupe their "victim". Yet, when we hear these stories they rarely phase us--unless of course there is some type of bizarre twist. You know why that is? It's because we know folk are shady out here. We know that it would be foolish to go around trusting folk all willy nilly. The stories we hear teach us that "trust has to be earned" and our own personal experiences reiterate this wisdom.
We also learn through life that trust is bestowed on a person as an honor once that person has shown himself/herself to be trustworthy. It is not given by virtue of association or relationship. Sad to say, it is often not given by virtue of sex or intimacy (assuming that the two are generally related). Trusting someone means that you believe this person to be dependable because he has proven, over a period of time, that his word is his bond. Trusting also means that you have faith in someone because she has shown you that she has your back through the muck and mire of life. Unfortunately, there is no "how to" formulaic approach to learning whether or not someone is reliable and trustworthy. Conferring trust on a person is situational because one never really knows when the time will come for her to know if the people in her life are simply all talk. However, there are telltale signs that pop up rather quickly that may let us know that a person is not that trustworthy. And when the time arises for "care" to be put to the test, either bonds are thickened or bonds are broken (or need to be).
Although trust is not automatically given by virtue of a relationship (barring healthy familial ties where trust should be automatic)the dissolution of a relationship or disengagement from a situation is almost always automatic when trust is broken, and it is damn hard to undo this. Sometimes we notice a person is slowly backing out of an association, choosing to stay around but remain aloof and emotionally distant, or producing/strengthening a proverbial barricade. This is because the person perceives that the "trust" that was hoped for, barely got off the ground in some cases, or once was has been violated.
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you”
(Friedrich Nietzsche). Whether or not its lying or some other act of infidelity (men looking at other women when out with their women, women catering to male friends to the chagrin of their partners, secretive and suspect behavior, etc...) the potential for complete and utter trust is compromised. It seems to make sense that if people value the folk in their lives they want to build trust instead of destroy even the possibility of it with destructive patterns of behavior. Now, if selfishness and usury are the intentions instead of building and growing in the first place, then none of this matters. And if a person has significant trust issues and projects all past experiences onto new experiences, so that each new person looks suspect, then none of this matters at all.
One thing is for sure, though,in order to have healthy relationships you have to have faith and trust--among a few other things--and that comes over time when people really want to nurture it.
Comments
Post a Comment