The Importance Of Trust

Article in brief: This article explores the different forms of trust and their importance throughout our lives.

Back in high school when I was a girl scout, our pack leader would randomly pair us up with partners we were unfamiliar with and ask one of us to stand behind the other. The girl in front would have to drop backwards in a free fall and trust that her partner would catch her before she hit the ground. I remember being paired with a girl that I was neither friendly nor knotty with. Being expected to drop backwards towards this person who was merely a stranger, not knowing if she would protect me from skinned elbows and a bruised scalp, cringed my abdomen in anxiety. The whistle blew and it was time for the drop. I held my breath in, forced my eyes shut and extended my arms away from my body to allow her to grab hold of me. What felt like the longest two seconds of my life were over when I landed safely in the reliable arms of the girl I was looking up at. I vividly recall her comforting smile and how in that instant, she was no longer a stranger.

The test of trust and the ability to have faith in the reliability of others does not end with childhood. On the contrary, our need for it grows in every one of our interactions with the years as we discover our own tests and what we qualify to be trustworthy.

Many a times we share personal matters with a confidant, only to find that they don’t see the harm in sharing it, in good will, with their own secret keeper. Although they may have done so in search of wise advice and intend no harm upon us, sometimes trust means knowing that the key to our secret disappears in that first revelation, and not shared with a third person no matter how insignificant the secret.

The word trust is grand in nature and weighs heavily in form, yet it is strengthened or weakened in our simple daily actions. When making promises, trust can be maintained by doing what we say and following through it. Keeping our words, or not making the promises at all. Trust can be formed simply by always being on time when expected and respecting the time and presence of those we meet. It also involves meaning our apology enough to not repeat our mistake, because repetitive apologies are traits of unreliability and can perish the foundation of trust.

However, the more valuable and difficult traits of trust form from the ability to respect the difference in the beliefs of those in our lives and accept their life choices. Those are the bonds that become malleable in nature, difficult to break and extend beyond changing circumstances, adaptable to the motion of the waves.

Throughout our lives we have always been taught to give with kindness, but never to take with kindness. It is not the duty of others to extend moral, emotional or financial generosity to us in difficult times. It is done out of the goodness of their heart, and we must, therefore, trustingly take with the same kindness given.

Above all, the form of trust most crucial to the survival of humanity is the ability to trust ourselves to live by all we consider trusting in the world.