Question of the day: TRUST? Yes or no?
I am an exceptionally (perhaps even pathologically) trusting person. I have never believed that the world is my enemy. I do not instinctively think that people are out to get me — even when they are, at times, openly out to get me. I have been known to stubbornly keep on trusting people long past an accumulation of evidence that I really ought to block them out of my life forever. I usually don't. (Block them out, I mean.) I'm not sure if being trusting for me has been a choice. I think it may simply be how I showed up. I think I was just born believing that we are all naturally inclined to look out for each other's best interests.
My magical thinking about trust has sometimes gotten me into trouble, admittedly. Big trouble, at times.
But not nearly as often as it has saved me.
Trust made me a traveler. Trust has brought me every single one of my dear friends. Trust taught me love. Trust let me move to New York City when I young. Trust empowered me send my writing out to publishers when I was an aspiring writer (never once afraid that if I showed somebody my work, they might steal it — a fear that I have seen hold people back in their creative endeavors.) Trust is how my professional relationships work, and trust is why my little rescue dog Rocky lets me pick him up — despite the fact that he was kicked in his former life. Trust allowed me to put forth my most intimate emotional confessions in a memoir published for the entire world to see. Trust just allowed me to write a historical novel, when I've never written one before. Trust is how I got married for a second time.
It's all completely delusional. A lot of people hate me. (You don't have to look deep into Google to find them. ) At times, I've been played as the biggest sucker on earth. Sometimes I WATCH myself being played as the biggest sucker on earth…and then just keep trusting, anyhow. Someday it all may bite me in the ass so hard it ruins me forever. Or maybe not. My ass has been bitten pretty hard already, and I keep on trusting. I don't think I'm naive, either. I understand the terms of the world. Without a doubt, the world is a savage place, marked by fear and injustice and suffering and wrongdoing and theft and lies and selfishness.
Nonetheless, I trust it.
Because we all live in delusion, no matter what our beliefs. So you might as well choose your delusion, right? I mean — it's your life, isn't it?
I choose trust. Works for me.
What about you?
Heart,
Liz
