About trust…
            My almost 12-year old grandson is smart and polite; however, there is something that troubles me. Every time I ask him to finish playing games on his computer or PlayStation at a particular time, he never does it in a timely manner. There is always another 15 or more minutes added to the assigned end time. As a possible solution with his difficulty with time, I offered to get him a watch; but, he says he does not need it because he has an iPhone. When I ask him for an explanation as to why he doesn’t stop playing the game, he tells me he just gets too involved in the game and forgets about the time! So, I finally decided to talk to him about trust and respect. After all, I feel that I need to be part in raising my grandson into a responsible human being. To me, ending the game in a timely manner has to do with trust and respect – my trust in him to respect the time he spends with me and his trust in me to respect me and my time with him. In order to talk to him about trust I decided that I first needed to find out what he knew about trust, so I asked him to write about the following:

– What is trust?

– Why is trust needed and where is it needed most?

– How do we achieve trust?

– What happens when there is no trust?                           

I have to say that my expectations were not too high, after all this is a subject that many adults have a problem with! Here is what my grandson wrote: “Trust is when you can count on someone when you need him. Trust is needed because you need some people in your life that you know they will be there for you; also to be able to keep secrets and understand you. You achieve trust by having a good relationship with someone. Trust is used mostly in a family and between good friends. Without trust there is loneliness, stress, and sadness.” Not bad for a little boy.

Now it is my turn to elaborate on this subject. So what is trust? It is something that we give freely away to other people, expecting the same thing in return. To be more specific, trust is an agreement between two or more parties (individuals, institutions) to fulfill a promise or obligation given by one party to another. The best way to understand what trust is, is by the following examples:

–  When two people get married they decide to trust each other. That means they can depend and rely on each other, support each other through the good and bad times, become happy with each other by creating a family, etc.

– When people become real friends they trust each other with their secrets. They also believe that they may depend on each in their hour of need. True friendships are forged over time by interdependence and by understanding that their friend can be trusted. Even without these examples, we know that trust is the underlying fabric of human society. Without trust, our society could not exist. To illustrate further, when we go to the bank and put money in the bank, we trust we will get the money back. When we send a letter through the post office, we trust that the letter will reach its destination. We trust our judicial system, our police, and governmental institutions. When we get hired, our employer trusts us to do the job we were hired for, and we trust our employer to pay for our work. And so on and on… Consider what happens when you find out that someone has lied to you – you feel less inclined to trust him next time, and also less inclined in general to trust other people.           

According to some psychoanalysts, basic trust is developed during the first two years of our life. A successful development of this basic trust leads to feelings of security and optimism, while failure to trust causes insecurity and pessimism. Our instincts and lifetime experiences may help us in determining to whom and what to trust. It is a fact though, that to develop trust may take a considerable amount of time, while it takes just one instance to lose someone’s trust. During my years of growing up in Poland, we would say the following popular expression:  when you burn yourself on a hot item you then blow air on a cold one. Our disappointment in being misled or lied to helps us to be more careful with dispensing of our trust. Yet, we want to trust because trust leads to good relationships. And here is one more thing to consider – as of December 10, 2018, 52 journalists were murdered around the world for trying to find out (and publicize) true facts. The US, despite the insults hurled by its President (and many of his supporters) at the press, is still a beacon for truth and free expression. This is something that every one of us should be proud of and thankful for. This is also the basis for a trust that we must have for the free press, because without it our democracy would not be able to exist – we cannot make well-informed decisions without a trust in truthful information from a free press society. A former General Secretary of the UN once said “Freedom of the press ensures that the abuse of every other freedom can be known, can be challenged and even defeated.”

I hope that after reading this reflection, my grandson will start to become more serious about being trustworthy and respectful – that he will keep the promises he makes.  Perhaps, he will start to utilize a timekeeper or clock and respect the importance of my trust in him. 

 

Joseph Hart