The big T word....

The idea of trust is one which many people have great difficulty in adopting as a factor to be guided by in their lives. Perhaps it may be because they are unaware of how important it is as a space of spiritual benefit. I am certainly a great advocate of practicality and common sense being high on the list of methodologies that are essential to a well ordered life; but equally believe that a life devoid of the premise of trust will ultimately imprison one in the confines of insularity and insensitivity.

Last week I encountered two incidents where I was obliged to re-examine relationships in which I took the fabric of trust as an unstated safety net. Interestingly what became exposed in these spaces of enquiry was how individuals are often emotionally intimidated by the sacrifice that may be essential for the value of trust to be evidenced, and the camouflage that is used to cover-up their inability to be honest within these situations where trust is sought.

What surfaces with every such incident where trust is squandered, is that we create and build up divides that validate suspicion. We choose to hold rigid and inflexible approaches to the governance of our personal politics and push away the very basic potential to accommodate a more inclusive philosophy. Of course it is always more comfortable to please oneself and be free of accountability to another; but these very areas in life are the spaces of possibility to open up our worlds to an enlightenment that steers the focus away from just the self. In nurturing others is the true learning space in which we too hold the key to know ourselves better.

The gift of trust for me is priceless, and one which suggests the truth of integrity of an individual. But this has to be a self monitored conscience, dictated by the spirit of who we are and what we choose to define as our humanness.

The measure of trust is not in the articulation of how we verbalize it, but in the actions that position the engagement of consideration in the lives of others. Small gestures, or even spaces of conflict, provide us those necessary tests to evidence this gift to one another. But the rigidity of thinking trips us and obscures the wisdom that is often blatantly obvious; and we each chain ourselves and others to those mediocre choices of selfish gain alone.

I think I have had many spaces of learning that taught me to find that bridge to cross where I could discover the benefit of the risk of trust.Because of course there are umpteen times when you are flat on your face because that safety net that you believe is there to catch you, just disappears. But the lessons of hurt far out way the joy of openness that trust brings with it and the enrichment to know that others too are of consequence and in need.

For those who falter, and fear that trust will take away their freedom from them, then such tight and insular worlds will only finally suffocate the spirit to grow in harmony.