November 2006
Trust. What is trust? Why should we trust? Trust is a figment of the imagination conjured up by the Romantic Idealist (I capitalize here because of the importance of these individuals' impact on today's society). To trust is to succumb to naivete. Even in the animal kingdom, trust is ambiguous. Puppies trust their mother, until the bitch eats them. The very concept of trust is so completely out of whack with nature that it shouldn't even factor into the human mentality. To err is human, correct? Then the only thing you can truly trust is that whoever you think you can trust is going to betray it. The closest thing you could categorize as trust is that each individual knows himself/herself well enough to expect a certain reaction from themselves given a certain situation. You can "trust" that if you talk shit to the wrong person, you're going to get your teeth knocked out. Causality. Trial and error. In the case of trust, the errors equal the trials. I realize that trust is fundamental to many concepts of society, for example, in the workplace or in religion. Even so, trust is continuously undermined in both. Your coworker will rat you out to save his own job. Your close family members will suffer and die without a hint of relief or in other cases suddenly and without warning (and for those who say "It's God's plan," I call bullshit). This is not to say do not trust your family. Or is it? Personal experience will show that while family members tend to be a bit more reliable than the average person, but even the best of brothers and the sweetest of sisters will eventually let you down. To illustrate the extent of my conviction, I don't even trust myself. Sure, I have a pretty good idea of what I will do in a given situation, but I have proven myself wrong on more than a few occasions. Now think. Who do you trust? In the Idealist sense of the word. Someone that you would allow a significant other to share a bed with and still rest in peace. I can name one. Thats it. One. And they will probably betray me in some way before it is all said and done. I'm sure that this has to do more with personal experience than anything else, but I find truth in the idea that it is not what we do but what we see that defines us. Back to the main topic. Why trust? Is it so bad to put up defenses against getting hurt? Why this masochistic tendency to fall for untrustworthy people? And I'm not singling anyone out here, because I feel that no one is trustworthy until they prove otherwise. I feel like it comes down to this: how much are you willing to lay down on that table while the dice are bouncing? Are you ready for the heartbreak? Are you ready for the turmoil? Are you ready for the agony? A time comes in everyone's life when they're tempted to push that whole stack to red when the line has gone black 23 times in a row (happened to me {in a casino}), when those pocket aces come out and you want to yodel "all in" from a mountaintop. But are you ready? How many times can you go home empty-handed before you don't even look in that direction anymore? So, bet or fold?
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