Life Forces - Chapter 3 - Trust

  Trust is an endangered species, a rare commodity that is hard to come by.  It is also one of the basic emotions.  By definition we have:

- the willingness of one party (trustor) to be vulnerable to the actions of another party (trustee)

- reasonable expectation (confidence) of the trustor that the trustee will behave in a way beneficial to the trustor

- risk of harm to the trustor if the trustee will not behave accordingly

- the absence of trustor's enforcement or control over actions performed by the trustee

  Wow, that sounds pretty dry, doesn't it?  We live in a society where we assume everyone has an ulterior motive for everything and nothing is more important then the bottom line and what's in it for me.  So naturally everyone is skeptical when they are dealing with a person that appears trustworthy.  At the same time, everyone wants to find someone trustworthy.  A paradox.  When we were young, we were naturally trusting and through experience, we learned to doubt.  Unfortunately, that is the way our society is structured so we have to live with it.  But occasionally we can trust someone implicitly and that is a wonderful thing.  Trust is an associated emotion with Love so intuitively we would trust our mate, a basic building block in any relationship.  As long as we can have trust (and of course Love and Joy) in our families, we can cope with what goes on in the world around us.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. - Booker T. Washington