The Central Struggle In Life: Trust

THE CENTRAL STRUGGLE IN LIFE: TRUST

By Bill Cottringer

    Long ago, when I started one of my earlier professional careers as a novice prison administrator, I stumbled upon what now turns out to be the most important insight of my life. This insight is, "do not make trust an issue or it will become one."  In dealing with inmates, I just declared that I would never fully trust them because they were born into lives of lies. That was reality.

     But the flip side of this seemingly pessimistic fiat magically opened the door and allowed us to relate and communicate like normal human beings, without controlling expectations, just doing what we think we need to do to get where we think we want to be. I was never able to teach anyone else this skill, and I now know why.

     The central struggle in life, and especially in relationships with other people which is what life is generally all about, is in our common effort to learn to be honest and trustworthy and be trusting of others. Unfortunately bad experiences and painful failures, make us gun shy and tempt us to retreat from our exposed vulnerabilities. But even that doesn't work because the real problem is much deeper.

     We are born into life with a fundamental trust question that gets quickly reinforced when we don't always get what we want from life, especially from other people who we open up with and give to. This leads to questioning trust itself and making it into an issue. The only way out of this impossible paradox is that people and situations are really not clearly either honest or dishonest, and besides that we all really want something beyond that artificial and tentative distinction. It is the fundamental definition of trust we adopt that determines how much or how little of it we have to give and get.

      Behind this frustrating struggle is our basic relationship with our Creator. How does it really work? Do we have to give into being the way we think God wants us to be and use our free will to make the right choices to get where God wants us to be—seeking truth about ourselves and becoming more trustworthy and trusting in becoming who we think we already are? Or does God just openly trust us to be who we are, without judgment or any other expectations?  Or, are we all just evolving into a more trustworthy and trusting relationship with God and reflecting that growth through our relationships with other people, on our common journey of becoming better human beings?

     The response we make to these questions determines our progress towards peace of understanding and that is something we all desperately want in everything we do. This is much more substantial than honesty the way we typically define it, because it is real honesty itself that the word can only point towards.

     Let's move from the abstract to the concrete in this discussion. None of us are as honest and trustworthy as we can be or expect others to be; and yet we are still slaves of making trust an issue, getting hurt and angry when others disappoint us with their incomplete human trustworthiness. We are only infants in developing our own potential to accept and deal effectively with the realities of life, including distrust and untrustworthiness and being more trusting and trustworthy ourselves in the process.

     How fair or sensible are we really being? Instead of eating an apple an enjoying it, we put off what enjoyment we could have, by wanting the apple to be a mango, orange or banana when we are just an apple ourselves.  The real logic of the heart here is that we are all tentative in our own growth towards becoming better people in developing our characters in the area of trust. Every moment is a test that we often fail and have to learn some positive lesson from. We are all just becoming who we think we already are.

     The main problem is when you make trust an issue by not realizing how you are doing this. What your most basic being—your soul—wants from life is what God wants from you…Surprise! We are given free will to surprise God by eventually learning how to use it for good, honest, real purposes. But we all waste a lot of valuable time using our free will to get all the wrong things, like absolute certainty and trust from another person when we are all just learning how to develop this central quality in everything we do. In essence we are asking for something that most of us are not really equipped to give or receive.

    What is the real message in all this? We always want something from somebody else that we don't have in our self. If we focus on the lifelong task of becoming honest and trustworthy within our own self, then that is all we can really do. A mantra from my mentor comes to mind—"Control the controllables and let go of the rest."  The whole trust issue is what we need to let go of within our self.  And then, we just have to avoid making trust an issue with other people by simply seeing the connection between doing so and the usual outcome, finally realizing that we all have to do this the same way. But we are not there.

     When we wake up to owning our role in keeping everyone else from growing in honesty and trustworthiness, we are free from the basic struggle in life—and free to become more honest and trustworthy ourselves and get more of that by giving more of it to others. After all, actions do speak louder than words.

    Our rational brains and feeling hearts want certainty, absolute honesty and goodness from others, without disappointment from not getting those things. This never happens until we realize it is impossible and then it becomes possible, inch by inch within our own self. The secret is in understanding the wisdom of this process. So, if you want other people to be more honest and trustworthy with you, stop wanting or expecting that and face reality. It currently doesn't exist perfectly in you. By doing everything to develop your own trust and trusting, you are doing all you can do to improve this situation.

     Here's the bottom line to all this. There is no absolute certainty in this life because it wasn't designed to be that way by a power higher than us and we won't ever know why. This is the mystery of life that we have no other choice than to accept and take a leap of faith to embrace fully. That really shouldn't be that hard, because it always takes such a leap in faith to close the gap between anything we think we "know" and the ultimate truth which that knowledge is pointing towards. When in doubt realize that we are all just becoming who we think we already are. We are all human struggling to become better. Acceptance of this humanness is the best start to making things better, including accepting not being able to accept unacceptable behavior in others. You may have something important and valuable to say in the big scheme of things. I hope I have done so in my attempt to be as honest as I can be right now.