Trust Revisited

I wrote a post about Trust almost 4 years ago, but it's something that I've been pondering quite a bit recently......

I've always considered myself to be a pretty trusting person; I usually act under the concept that people are trustworthy* until proven untrustworthy. But few months back, I was sort of "accused" of not making people earn my trust. I didn't think that would be a problem, but as I evaluated it, I realized that, perhaps, if trust isn't earned, it isn't respected.

However, there are different levels of trust. There has to be, because there's no way that I'm gonna trust a used car salesman on the same level that I trust a close friend when I'm bearing my soul**. Trust requires risk. The more risk you're willing to take, the deeper you'll be able to trust someone. And that's where I get stuck.... risk. I've taken some pretty crazy, awesome, stupid, invigorating risks - like what I eat when I'm in foreign countries, or the time we laid on train tracks to see if you could feel the vibrations of it coming, or diving 90+feet in a cave when I'm technically only certified for 60 feet, or how I spent my last days in Saipan before moving away, or racing my roommate home through the busy streets of Vancouver (I won!). I love those kind of risks. But when risk involves trusting someone else, that's a whole other story.....

I'm quick to trust on the first initial level, where the stakes are low. I can calculate the risk and see that there isn't much to lose. Essentially, I know how to trust with my mind. But few people make it to the place where I can actually trust with my heart. It's a tender and fragile place. A place that I'm hesitant to expose to people in fear of what might happen. But, even scarier, is what might happen if I don't open that part of my heart to the right person......

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*unless my initial impression tells me otherwise.

** although, sometimes it's easier to be completely honest and transparent with a total stranger......