Trust: A choice or not?
I always raise an eyebrow when I hear people say:
I can’t trust anyone.
Not that I’m minimalizing the issue of trust. But to just say that I can’t trust anyone flies in the face of various choices we make in everyday life. For example, millions of us head to various restaurants, stores, shacks, cafes, stands, dives, bars, shops, and pubs in order to satisfy our hunger and thirst. We walk right in, order what we want, and consume it without a blink of an eye. Heck, we sit down, eat, and drink while distressing over trust issues (to ourselves or to a friend). Yet we trusted the preparers of our food and drink unconsciously. And when you look at it, the millions of food and drink orders received, prepared, and consumed yearly without issues completely dwarfs those food and drink orders with issues. And when I say issues, I mean the ones that affect you physically. So what’s this phenomenon? Is it simply trust of your fellow man and woman due to necessity? We all watch or read the news. We commonly hear reports that lead you to believe that there is little to no trust in America anymore. Yet we consume creations of our fellow citizens on the regular.
When we drive, we stay in our lane because we know the consequences of hitting another vehicle and/or obstruction. We hope that other drivers feel the same way. Yet we jump in our cars at moments notice and drive without thinking. Dare I say we trust other drivers with our lives and their lives? We must do. But frequently, we say I can’t trust anyone when it comes to relationships. Burned one too many times by friends, girlfriends, and/or boyfriends, we feel that no one can be trusted. Some people turn into social recluses as a result. Others just become bitter and resentful. Yet those same people exhibit the same unconscious trust of their fellow man and woman in situations outside of relationships.
So, do we choose to trust or not? Or do we just selectively trust or not? But how does that explain our ability to implicitly trust each other in other situations yet believe they still can’t trust anyone?
