How Six Minutes Can Affect Your Life Part 3: Trust

Trust.  I know I have written on this if not mentioned it (...like a bajillion times), but it is SIGNIFICANT to me and I feel it contributes a lot of things in life.  We trust the ability to wake up in the morning.  We trust we will have a job with financial stability.  We trust simple things like cars to get to work, technology to function in EVERY part of our lives, or that someone will catch us when we fall.

I had two hours to develop trust in Mr. Black that with both of us having knowledge on what was to take place in the jump we would both survive regardless of his professional obligations as an instructor.  Actually, the professionalism was the only thing I trusted (Not to mention great media work by Mr. Blue).

Trust can be complicated.  There are levels that have specific purposes.  

Trusting coworkers between the lines of personal and profession interactions.  The same applies to peers at school, for example, with group projects.  Can you trust them to properly contribute?  Or can you trust that your teachers know the material they teach about?  Keep in mind special blotches of ink on paper are to be able to prove this and yet using the same concept, those blotches of ink do not always keep people safe when it comes to legal matters (marriage license, restraining orders, protection orders, etc.).  What about the level of trust in places we live with landlords or those in maintenance?

I will confidently say that the greater extent of trust is just in functionality.  We believe everything will continue to progress in time but time is another analysis for, well, another time, but is this trust or do we just take it for granted?

So I have admitted that trusting others is hard and most of that is due to the fact that you cannot control the other person.  You cannot trust something that is unstable or things out of your control.  Then again, can we trust ourselves?

I would love to work towards a skydiving license; however, financially I am out of luck at the moment.  I am still young enough (or at least I feel young enough) that I have time.  Time has nothing to do with this, only the accomplishment itself, but what if I told you I am a bit scared to do it myself?  Will I pull the right cords?  Will I pack my parachute correctly?  Am I subconsciously going to kill myself doing this? (Sorry, Mom, morbid sense of humor).  Do I trust me?

There is your lottery winning question.  Do I trust me?  Do you trust you?  Could I add any more psychological issues to this blog since I keep justifying I probably have multiple personalities? (Yes, I am kidding)  Some days I am strong than others.  On my strong days I trust that I have enough power in me to keep standing and lift others from their knees.  On weak days, I trust that I am in control enough that, if given the time, I can lift myself from my knees.  Trust can sometimes limit us or maybe, in my case, we can trust that whatever happens will happen and we will be able to handle the consequences when we get there. 

Lies, Deceit, and Anger--The Gift of Trusting Life

Society likes to view things as fate, destiny, or even base it on instinct that are based on our beliefs that center around religion, tradition, culture, or our own spirituality.  When I was younger I trusted my instinct when it came to making decisions.  As I got older the belief of guidance from my own instinct became a fairy tale as if I had Pinocchio's conscience, Jiminy Cricket.

Sadly I fell into a trap by not trusting myself, the one person I should have put more trust in.  I made the wrong choice in a commitment, lost myself, and was able to regain a bit of me back, only more cautious. Trust is a gift that we, inevitably, lose to the wrong person, but like bumper cars, a simple thump can redirect us in the right direction.

Beyond the lies of my ex I have worked hard to trust the new people that come into my life, being told that I should give people the benefit of the doubt like the justice system, innocent until proven guilty.  After a few more years, alterations to the plan of my life, I now have many different 'signs' that are 'bumping' me into what may be a new direction.  

Last year I had planned to stay with my job one more year to save up enough money to move until I was let go as the company decided to downsize since they were not able to handle unforeseen complications.  I do not know how many of you were taught this, but life does not stop even if you do.  You cannot push fast-forward, you cannot rewind, and you cannot just stop life to secure a grip on reality.  I figured no matter the path I take I would still have my friends.

I hate to say it, but sometimes the things we think are true never actually existed in the first place and the people who I thought were friends were the hypocrites that they criticized.  I like to think that life offers the 'three strikes and your out' theory to everything, in which I have succeeded gracefully.  I experienced a tightening of a relationship when one friend, who verbally expressed a deep form of love, first lied to a large group of people the reasons that this person changed the course of the individual's life.  You cannot blame people for the choices you make and you cannot blame someone for not loving you when you did not love that person.  This person claimed a change in life plans was not of the individual's own doing, but of the control of another.  Shortly after this expression, the individual put trust in another, believing that I had betrayed the person's trust.  One question I ask is if we were truly friends, as close as you say we were then you would know better than to believe the lie, correct? If you truly were a trustworthy person, you would not have lied to millions of people of how to betrayed another human being, correct?  And if you truly were not a hypocrite, you would not be seeking the companionship of people who you never wanted to be in the presence of anyway, correct?

Now I am sad that this happened because I truly cared for the person, but I realize that this is a thump that I must now redirect from.  The second strike was trusting the person who started the rumor about me to begin with.  Just so everyone knows, there is more to telling a lie than the words that come out of your mouth.  Your body and voice speak volumes in correlation with the words that you choose to use as you speak your lies, not to mention if you cannot face something directly then you might as well let it go and find a new hobby.

Counting the thuds, the bumps, and bruises I began to realize lies follow a chain reaction and those in association with the initial domino continue to fall after the fact.  Translation? Those in association to liars do not need your acknowledgement, respect, or friendship either.  We choose people in accordance to our values as we are more likely to respect them, but this often leaves us to find people come and people go.  No matter the mere value of the time period a person is in your life, the person holds value to teach us a lesson.

When I was younger I learned the value of lies until I learned that honesty is more valuable and lies now leave me angry, specifically when they are meant to hurt another.  So where does that leave me?  Back to trusting my intuition and realizing that not everyone can remain in one place all the time and as I evolve, so do others around me using their own 'bumps' as guidance for their lives. We 'bump' and then we move in another direction.  Whoever said life was a roller coaster misread the fine print that the ride was a bumper car with millions of milestones to overcome in ever which direction.