When I log on to some “social sites,” it’s interesting to read where people come from and how they arrive at their, sometime very interesting, conclusions.

I was having a discussion about trust with a guy not too long ago. He told me he felt trust had to be earned.

For me it is like my teachers in grade school, you start with an “A” and it is your responsibility to maintain that “A” if you are at all interested in passing.

The only reason one feels trust has to be earned is because someone or some experience said that this, disappointment, is what it will be like for through out life. So to that extent we set ourselves up not to trust thereby widening the divide between you and the rest. We all do it…the trick is catching it and and correcting it. If you find yourself not trusting someone because of what someone else has done…check that and correct that.

It is wise to exercise caution, but don’t mistake fear of “it happening again” for caution; because the next man is not the man before him. I learned that when i do things for others, I don’t do it for me. For me there is freedom in that and the ease of letting that disappointment fall by the way side.

Think about how much good you may have missed because you refused to allow yourself to trust?

I would contend that at its best, our humanity tells us to trust until that trust has been intentionally abused. Fear of disappointment says the converse. Earning trust is an egoic concept that suggests one be deemed more worthy of that trust than another. We look for people to fail us and when they do we we experience an “i knew it” moment. People are human and humans make errors so if you are consistently looking for the errors, they are going to fail you every time.

Just a thought…