Is starting with trust a good idea?

When I was younger, I was frequently called naïve because my default behavior was to trust people. Ironically, (or perhaps appropriately) the person who I remember telling me this the most was a guy I was romantically involved with who ended it by telling me he was about to propose to his girlfriend. I didn’t know he had a girlfriend. Turns out many people did and no one thought to inform me. That alone perhaps proves that I was naïve. That alone perhaps should be the reason why I shouldn’t trust people as readily.

Yet 17 years after that incident, I’m 42 and I still think starting with trust is the right approach. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I trust people blindly or that I’m not able to learn from past experiences. I just don’t start off from a place of distrust.

That starting point is why I’m writing today. I go back and forth as to how much of my life experience I should share with people who are willing to read or listen — like you folks who have made it this far in this specific article. It used to be that perhaps I was a bit ashamed of some experiences. I was definitely terrified to share others, and in some cases, I knew that there would be real consequences to another person or to me, so I stopped myself. Since always doing the right thing is my most important principle, I would never willingly and knowingly talk about something with the intention of hurting another person. Since unintended consequences are by definition unknown, there’s a slippery slope from “Is it OK for me to say this?” to “There’s a chance this will not land well with so-and-so and therefore I should stop.”

Every time I end up not sharing, it’s not that I regret it, but I do think about whether sharing may have helped somebody. Therefore, am I not morally obligated to share it if there’s even a chance that somebody else’s life will be made better as a result?

I guess what it really comes down to is this idea of trust. I believe that I should start from the point of trust with others, so should this not apply to me as well? Should I not trust myself to say, write, do the right thing? Should I not trust that anyone who does read what I write or listen to what I say has agency over their choice to do so and therefore I cannot be responsible for any negative reaction they may have? Why do I pause? There have been so many times I’ve drafted something, just to have it gather dust on my laptop because I found a “compelling” reason to not say it. At what point does “reason” become “excuse?”

So let’s talk about trust.

What is trust? It’s not a thing in and of itself. It’s a belief that something or someone else is true, reliable, etc. Trust is not an objective measure. That’s why it can be gained or lost in a million different ways for each person. With over 7 billion of us on this rock, that’s a lot of possible combinations.

I got to thinking about trust a couple of nights ago when I ran into my neighbor. I don’t even know how we got to this subject, but she said to me that she knows she trusts people too much and she gets burned as a result. And even though she recognizes what happened, she does it over and over again with the same result. A cynic may say, “if you do something the same way over and over again and expect a different outcome, that’s the definition of insanity.” Does that apply to trust? Are people like me who start with trust insane? Is my neighbor insane?

Consider these true facts from my life: I had a boyfriend who abused me for years. I’ve been conned by someone I loved for a large amount of money. I’ve been cheated on more than once. I’ve been lied to and abandoned by friends. I’ve been raped. I’ve been harassed. You’d think this would be enough to break my spirit, but it hasn’t. I still trust.

While I was reflecting on this over the past few days, I bounced all over the place. I thought about the resilience that each horrible experience has helped me build and the self-awareness I gained as a result of trust being broken. Then I started to question why I’m focusing on all these positive outcomes from clearly negative events. Am I just trying to justify my past choices? Am I accepting instead of changing so that I can avoid these breaches of trust in the future? Should I not be more guarded?

The place I ended up was what I think is the reason why I start with trust in the first place. I don’t want to live in a world that’s filled with fear, doubt and caution. I love life. And I hate wasted potential. What sort of world would it be if I let my bad past experiences change me from the person I like into a person that’s always looking over her shoulder? My trust — naive or not — is so core to me that to let it go would be to let go of my own essence. My trust is why I’m able to take advantage of opportunities. It’s why I befriend every dog I meet, why I stick my nose in flowers, walk barefoot, chat up strangers and make people laugh. Take away my trust and you take away my joy, my courage, my resourcefulness, and my spirit.

I choose to live in a world of hope and possibilities. To do that, I must at least start from a place of trust.

What world do you choose to live in?