NaBloPoMo: Trust [ties]

Today, someone told me they trusted me.  I cried.

That moment was powerful.  It was important for reasons I won't go in to here, but also simply because it highlights how beautiful and intrinsic the concept of trust is.  For the most part, we are individualistic creatures.  The cultural differences that exist across the scope of humanity do little to dim the light of unique individuality that exists in each of us.  We tend to consider our opinions to be most valid, especially when applied to ourselves, because it's assumed that we know our own self in more depth than anyone else can.  Similarly (but significantly distinct), we tend to believe that we are most suited to making the decisions that affect us personally, both important and trivial.

We are outraged when someone assumes they know us better than we know to be the case.  Sometimes, we're wrong, and the object of our outrage is actually speaking from wisdom and experience and careful, loving observation of your own life.  This is the case with parents and their teenage progeny.  We have all experienced wondering how the hell our parents can be so wrong, and most of us have the good fortune of laughing about how silly it is to think such things about people so close to you.

We live in a world where trust is the exception, not the rule.  I think a lot of people wish this were not the case, but it is often so difficult to determine whether a person has your best interests in mind while they make decisions that affect you.  In most cases, we'd rather be safe than sorry.  And then, sometimes, rarely, someone comes along.  This person may be a friend, a relative, a stranger, or anything in between.  What connects us to this person is typically undefinable, but there's an affinity almost at once.  Maybe we feel inexplicably that within moments of meeting this person it's safe to tell them more than perhaps we should, or maybe it just means they put us at ease.

Whatever the case, when those seeds germinate, they put roots down into your soul and push shoots up into the world.  Trust is grown, cared for, and harvested by those who notice it.  It nourishes and inspires those who understand its intricate subtleties.  And sometimes, it just makes you cry a little bit.  However it manifests, trust is organic and irreplaceable.  There is no substitute, in a romance, in a friendship, even between enemies.  Those people who you know the best may not be trusted most, but those trusted most will soon be understood best.

After all, what is trust but unconditional and universal love for the way we interact as human beings, spinning at a million miles an hour through the vastness of space, alone, or not, but always surrounded by the potential for understanding our place in the world.

Trust ties me to people.  It ties me to myself.  Trust is the force that holds us together, and when it breaks, we become unglued.  Heartbreak is nothing more than a loss of trust.  Betrayal is the result of misplaced trust.  And when trust continues unabated, evolves and grows, puts down new roots and regrows season after season, we call it love.