#35 - Trust

Trust is one of the hardest things to acquire, yet one of the easiest things to lose. This is one of the great paradoxes of life. No one can say for sure why you can spend a lifetime with someone doing the vast majority of things well, making deposits in someone's emotional bank account (I borrowed this concept from Stephen Covey), and with a bad decision or two, destroy a relationship or, at the least, taint it considerably, with most people. There are very tolerant people, and, unfortunately, folks who are human doormats who have a high tolerance for irresponsible behavior, I realize. For most of us that isn't the case and fewer words are more hurtful or damaging than hearing "I can't trust you" from a loved one.

Depending on the seriousness of the transgression: lying, cheating, and stealing (you know, the biggies), etc., and depending on whether the person you committed this sin against is the forgiving type and willing to take into the account the totality of your charcacter and other actions you've done over the life of your relationship, you may not pay that serious a penalty (relatively speaking) as if you did it to a hard-line, intolerant type. Still, the relationship, and the nature of it, has been strained and depending on the aforementioned factors, will take a lot longer to restore to it's prior state, especially in relation to whatever it was that was done. In extreme cases, the situation is irreparable and trust is never regained. Once that lense of trust and confidence is altered there's a road you have to travel down to re-adjust it back. Nobody likes to be viewed with eyes of suspicion, even if it is well-earned.

That's why before we do something we know could have consequences of violating trust we weigh the potential benefits vs. penalties, particularly loss of trust, before we do something risky. Often momentary lapses of judgment have unintended, dire consequences because we failed to reason out the potential results of our actions when we indulged in a passing fancy, gave in to an impulse of a fleeting moment, or basically put our needs before the needs of another in a hurtful way. Many of us never learn this discipline and fail to take others into consideration in those moments of unfortunate decision. Perhaps this seeming inequity has it's roots all the way back to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, when God's trust was irrevocably violated by Eve's mistake of eating from the one tree she was explicitly told not to. Seduced and tricked by the serpent herself, she subsequently entangled her husband Adam in the same mess, violating his trust. From that moment on they became ashamed of their nakedness and humankind has never been the same again. Way to go Eve! Good lookin' out.

While most choices or violations of trust aren't that clear-cut and dramatic, we all know, in our guts, the fundamental difference between right-and-wrong and what our loved ones and friends consider a violation of trust or their standards. It's up to each of us to decide whether the juice is worth the squeeze.