Trust pt. I
Daily Meditation #103–6/5/2022
No matter how tightly you clench your eyes, pray, or how many Xanax or Valium you pop, when the plane is taking off, whatever is going to happen will happen.
You have absolutely no choice but to trust the pilots.
Their thousands of hours of expertise.
The people who fueled and safety checked the plane…
Trust.
Trust is one of the hardest emotional controls we can cultivate. I believe it is a segment of perception. But, like perception, it can yield great rewards.
Perception and gratitude are the lenses through which we look to internally improve our journey through life.
We perceive our life is good and we pour out gratitude incessantly, and life is good and we end up finding more to be grateful for!
Trust, however, is something more esoteric.
Trust is, in my view, us controlling how we perceive others’ likeliness to love us or hurt us.
We must go through life knowing that we are capable of evil (evil as others perceive it!) and turning that understanding outwards, as well. We understand that others, too, are capable of evil — even evil directed at us.
Robbery.
Rape.
Murder.
Spouses lying about abuse…
However, we cannot wake each day with a sword in hand, assuming they will direct that evil at us.
This is the life of the broken and betrayed. Life on edge, looking over the shoulder and assuming all are out to harm you isn’t life.
Know people are capable of malevolence.
But trust they are not evil until they act evilly.
Heed their words, yes, but pay the most attention to how they act.
Acknowledge your perceptions of them well, and be careful not to assume too much — good or bad — until you’ve seen them act in a manner to undermine trust.
Just as I may carry a weapon beneath my belt, entering each day trusting I won’t need it as most people won’t act evilly, I enter the days prepared to have this trust possibly violated.
Go into the world trusting…
…but prepared.
Follow for daily philosophical meditations.
These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
