mulberryshoots

Lately, I’ve been thinking that trust, or lack of trust, is one of the main ingredients to our recipe for life. Especially in times like this when the world outside is full of bully politics and internecine battles about what we should believe and what we should do. The American Dream is definitely gone, having disappeared “in sixty seconds.”

What’s left? Belief and trust in our marriages? In our family relationships? I tend to go overboard in being generous towards those I care about. And then withdraw when I feel it may have given the wrong impression. There is not one of us who doesn’t have some kind of personality quirk (or disorder as some are prone to believe,) learning disability (dyslexia or more) or other qualities that might be captured as “narcissistic” or self-involved. In fact, it seems to me that the constant exposure and reiteration of personality descriptions has rendered us all into pie charts of inadequate behavior in one form or other.

Which then lends us to have trouble trusting others. After all, if we’re all so needy in character or integrity ourselves, how can we then trust others not to be the same way? Maybe trust is not where it’s at, after all. Maybe it’s faith. A kind of loyalty that transcends what our rational mind tells us. Yes, maybe that’s it: faith in ourselves and in others.