Do you trust people? I've slowly come to realize that I inhabit a world where people are afraid to believe in each other and afraid of the idea that others around them are there to help them out whenever they need it. Don't get me wrong, friends are there for me as I am there for them. But what about the random stranger or the new acquaintance? What level of trust do we keep in them? Those people with whom we're thrust into situations and we just have to make do as best as we can.
I trust people. People I know better than others, I trust based on how I know them. There are people I'd trust to water plants at home. There are people I'd trust to send some mail on time. There are people I'd trust to drive out to help me if I have car trouble. There are people I'd trust to call my parents in a foreign country with important news. There are people I'd trust with my family's safety. There are people I'd trust to never intentionally feed me meat. There are people I'd trust with my dad's cars. There are people I'd trust to keep me in check when I do go a bit crazy.
Why do I trust people so much? I like to think it's in part because of the Golden Rule. I trust others because of an inner desire to be trusted by others? I won't deny that I get those warm feelings whenever someone sees in me someone who they can trust. That no matter what happens in life, my respect and value for people will never lessen and my ability to help will only be hampered by my physical lacking. I think this is important for me as a future doctor too. I can't build a relationship with my patients if it isn't built on open trust. What I know, they should know and vice versa. A doctor's ability to practice medicine is directly related to the patients' abilities to trust their physician.
In a related vein, while I can lie and I've lied before in playfulness, to lie to protect an image or myself, even a white lie "of no consequence" would undermine who I am. If I screw up, then that's how it is and I don't hide it. If I decide to do something differently with proper reasoning, then I don't need to hide what I did. Will I make mistakes? Yes. Heck, I've made plenty of mistakes already. The important thing to me is that I do learn from them. And that's all anyone can ask of me, myself included. I'm far from perfect, but I will work hard to maintain the part of me that I do know (I'm still figuring out other parts of me). Integrity and the ideal to be truthful are one of the pillars of my life.
I say this not to criticize others (I'm sure they have valid reasons for their beliefs), but rather to point out where I stand and why. My way isn't for everyone. Yeah, it's people like me who get steamrolled by others who wish to take advantage of us for their personal gain. I didn't say my choice was easy, just that it is something that is important to me sleeping well at night.
2 comments:
i think that when someone has their trust broken by one person, they spread that fear of trust they have aquired to the entire world, rather than focusing on the one person who broke that trust. I always try to keep trust and mistrust where they belong, and I've found that one of 2 things happens. the strong people stop trusing anyone, and learn to take care of themselves, and the weak people put all their trust onto a few people, so that each time something happens to break it, they fall harder.
Do you have a belief for someone who trusts many people so that whenever something happens to cause one of the people to break the trust, the hit isn't as hard since the other people are there to help support you? I agree with the idea of those two types of people, but I do think there might be more variability than we're taking into account with the two-type theory.
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