Trust

What is trust? The definition is: Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing. What does this mean? Are we born with this definition? Why do we trust? Why is it thrown around all of the time in relationships? Can trust be beaten or oozed out of us? Can we rebuild trust? Is trust earned or is it the rite that everyone deserves? According to Booker T.
"Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him."
But are we supposed to do this inately? Are we not supposed to just give in to our negative thoughts? Why do the distrust thoughts enter in? Cicero had an interesting point of view: "Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him." So what the fuck does that mean? Does that mean that you should be cautious? Does that mean you need to earn your trust through eating the "salt?" Does that mean when embarking on a new adventure you should trust your instincts, even if it deals with a lack of trust?
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust" Thanks Frank Crane, that helps a lot. It is the truth. Torment. That rings so true because i have been there. So where is the balance? Just to live life with an equal amount of trust and distrust? Whom do you trust? Why do you trust those certain people versus the people that you do not trust?
"Our distrust is very expensive" Emerson says. Again I second that. It is very expensive. So where does distrust come from? Why do some of us have more distrust from within? I think that it stems from our experiences. It is our baggage that either affects us to trust or to not. For those of you that cannot follow this logic it is actually simple.
Some would trust and get rooked or cheated. They might continue to trust because they believe that overall this single event will not happen again. This can happen several times and what you generally have is the balance between the good events resulting from trust outweighing the bad ones resulting from trusting too much.
Others (myself included) build barriers and strengthen ourselves behind them so that we do not get hurt a second or third time. "Trick me once, shame on you. Trick me twice, shame on me." -- Anonymous. The general mistrust becomes the norm. Is this a sign of weakness? Maybe. Is it a sign of low self-esteem? Maybe. The lack of integrity or the reliance on someone else's integrity might be viewed by some as the lowest single attribute to have. Honesty and communication are the keys to overcoming this attribute. This i have learned and pondered a lot. Without effective communication there can really be no basis for trust. If the being that you are reliant upon cannot tell you their feelings then how can you trust them? Hand in hand with communication and trust is honesty. Lies can kill trust and force bad situations to become worse ones. If you cannot tell the truth or if you havent heard the truth then trust oozes or gets beaten out of you. Doesn't it? Honesty and communication they succeed all of the time.
I think Willy S. maybe said it the best when he sort of defined trust:
"Love all, trust a few."
Those five words speak the volume of my inner feelings on trust. Call me weak or call me lacking confidence...but, I know who i can trust and i know who i cannot. Because i am honest and because i value communication i can see these things in others. This is fact. I love you all, but i can only trust a select few of you.