Why Should I Trust You?

I got to thinking this morning about trust.  Trust is something that we should have in a lot of people in our lives; both in people that we know personally and people that we don't.  Now, according to dictionary.com, there multiple definitions of the word trust when used as both a noun, adjective, and verb.  I want to focus on the definition that we most commonly use when we relate to people: to have confidence in; rely or depend on.

I say that we apply this to two different types of people: trusted friends and trusted strangers.  Those that would fall under the category of trusted friends are people that we really know well: close family members, best friends, spouses, etc.  These are people we have spent time getting to know well.  We have more in-depth knowledge of them that the average person walking down the street.  These are people who, for the most part, could trust with our mental and physical well-being.

The second group are the trusted strangers.  These are people we don't know on a deep level or maybe just know by name only.  This level of trust that we have in these people sort of goes against our nature.  We don't want to trust them but, for one reason or another, we need to. When we go to a doctor, we know nothing about them except that they went to medical school and passed their board certification.  We have to put our trust in them that they will do what is best for us and not try to put us through anything that we don't actually need.

And that second level of trust goes way beyond the local level, if you think about it.  We have to trust that the governor of our state won't allow companies to pour toxic run-off into our water supply. We have to trust that our president won't launch a nuclear strike just because another country's president said that he looked like a bloated dead fish.

This web of trust links every person, all across the globe.  It is a bit scary to think about how much trust we have to have in people, beyond who we know, to be able to live our lives in a relative safe frame of mind.

To be honest, my trust doesn't stretch as far as most due to a lot of negative past events.  When a negative event happens, it does erode away that trust in others and it is very hard to put it back.  Perhaps this is why so many societies are struggling: because of this trust that has never been fixed.  And it is something that needs to be fixed, desperately, or else our lives and the lives that are connected to ours, will continue to erode away to nothing.