What were your first messages about trust?
I was told that I shouldn't talk with or trust strangers. It was ok to trust people in my family and immediate community. Trust is very fragile and if I wanted freedom as a teenager, I needed to be trustworthy. What I wasn't told was what do I do if someone in my family or immediate community viloated trust. Then, who do I trust? "I can't talk to strangers," but they will always be strangers if I don't talk to them.
Over the weekend, we talked about this very subject at my coaching conference. What was also amazing to me was the disussion about cultural discourse and trust. Aside from my parents, what messages did I receive about trust from my religion, my geographical location, from my community? I always thought that trust was universal. That either you trust someone or you don't or they trust you or they don't. I am finding that it just isn't that simple.
There is more to the onion that the first layer.
1 comment:
I think that men and women treat this very differently. I remember being just out of college, sharing a large house with three women -- I would often walk in the house without immediately shutting the door behind me, and the women I lived with would get REALLY ... UPSET. And all I could think is, "but we can't get robbed; we're all home."
Finally, one of my roommates looked me dead in the eye and said, "But Eric ... rapists actually prefer it if someone IS at home." Um ... duh.
I think a lot of men are more trusting of their surroundings because they don't feel as physically vulnerable. Parents of girls treat them to be more wary -- for very good reasons -- but I wonder how much of that spills into the emotional realm as well.
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