Tag Archives: trust

Trust should be …

a four letter word.

It is one of those things that can make or break us as we amble aimlessly along our path of life while trying to build friendships, relationships or other ships.

It is elusive to me.

I admit it.

I trust rarely and with great trepidation.

I suppose if I were to consult a shrink about the essence of my mistrust, I would be given an earful of information about inadequacies on my part, past issues and other useless reportage.

As a photographer, however, and all that nonsense aside, I trust nature.

I trust light, shadow and beauty.

I trust that every sunrise will bring a new and magnificent beginning.

I trust that every full moon will fill me with awe.

I trust that Winter will bring snow-laden limbs of bare trees and stark, gray landscapes against the exclusively winter aqua sky.  A force, in itself, to be reckoned with for it occurs no other time of the year.

A magnificent color in a desolate season.

Nature at a pinnacle of  his and her beauty … Old man Winter working with Mother Nature.

They don’t get along all that well, but in the aqua sky surrounding the evening sun in the throes of Winter, they are flawless.

I trust that Spring will bring with it fragrant blooms of recently sleeping trees and streams filled with heavy rains.  Waterfalls that exceed my expectations, fiddler-heads unfolding, moss as green as the  hills of Ireland and rocks sublimely submerged beneath heavily watered creeks.

I trust that Summer will bring the heady, intoxicating scent of honeysuckle, sunlit spiderwebs, lightning bugs, views of the ocean, seas of wheat and barley, acres of wildflowers and stunning, irrepressible  heat.

I trust that Autumn will bring the smell of decaying leaves, foliage in a myriad of colors, an early frost, snow in the high places and an incredible peace of mind that only fall can bring.

I cannot be certain if I love Spring or Autumn most of all …

I suppose I love them both equally, as I do Summer and Winter.

How can I choose when each one brings unfathomable beauty unequaled by any other thing?

hands … old and  young, with a daisy between them hands

A fiddler-head unfurling on my mountain.mountainspring-12

The Outer Banks of North Carolina … my centerouterbanks_bodieislandlight-62

Being human means that …

we open ourselves up for things that maybe, if we weren’t human, we wouldn’t otherwise know.

We open ourselves up to disappointment.

To hurt.

To humiliation.

To joy.

To love.

To faith and friendship.

To knowledge.

To trust.

These are all part of what makes us human.  Trusting, loving and relying on other humans as we try our best to make our way along this journey is part of the process.

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, what we feel, what we believe, where we put our faith … that is what is important.

People will let us down because at the core, we are are human.

None of us are perfect and none of us can be trusted implicitly.

I find myself realizing for the hundredth time how foolish I was.

It won’t make any difference the next time.

I will trust and put my faith in humans knowing in advance that it could very well be a mistake.

But we are fallible.

It is ok to be wrong.

It happens sometimes.

Being wrong about someone isn’t the end of the world.

Yes, we will cry and cry and cry.  Or at least I will.

Crying and throwing breakable things is how I best deal with disappointments.   However, until I replenish my breakable stash, crying is my most appealing option.

Nothing wrong with crying when you realize you were foolish.

But if crying is all you do, then you never move past being foolish and if you never move past being foolish, then you didn’t learn a thing.

Learn something and move on.

People will sometimes let you down.

That is part of the whole human thing and just as we have been disappointed, we will disappoint others.

It is a circle … imperfect and yet a circle just the same.

And whether we like it or not, we are human.

Live.  Love.  Rejoice.  Enjoy.  Cry.  Laugh.  Embrace.  Trust.  Live.

That is the circle.

He looked right at me and I felt his power through the lens of my camera.  I was awestruck.

He looked right at me and I felt his power through the lens of my camera. I was awestruck.

Trust …

a small word and yet it holds an incredible amount of power.

What is trust, anyway?

Mr. Webster defines it as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something”.

Assured reliance.  

What does that mean in reality?

To me, it means being able to take someone at face value, to believe what they say, to know that I can tell them anything and not be judged, betrayed or lied to.

It is one of those things that we all look for in other people.  Things we want to believe about those we hold dear in our lives.

But is it, in reality, something that truly exists?

I suppose that it does, sometimes.

I have trusted people in my lifetime and have, on more than one occasion, learned the hard way that I misread, misconstrued, misunderstood or simply made a bad choice.

Bad choices are not obsolete.  

We all make them.

Some, more often than others.

I’m not, by nature,  a trusting person, so I give it sparingly.  I suppose that is one reason that it hurts so deeply when the confidence is betrayed and the trust destroyed.

The destruction of it leaves a hole that can’t really be filled.  It leaves me vulnerable to further mistrust and, in doing such, I may miss out on relationships that could be to my benefit.

But if I lose the ability to trust because of betrayal, where am I?

Who am I?

When someone I trusted with the innermost secrets of my heart and mind betrays me, what am I left with?

Myself.

I can trust myself and know that I will keep my  own secrets.

I don’t want to be a person who cannot trust, however, over the years, I have learned by experience.

I trust my Lord, for He has never betrayed me.

I have, on occasion, betrayed Him and yet He has stuck by me, even during the worst moments of my life.

I am starting to think that I can, other than Him, trust no-one.

It is a sad state to find oneself in, but one that many people, far too often, find themselves.

When someone can trust themselves to be everything they can be, to stand for what is good, to hold their head up in the midst of adversity and controversy, then they can say they have fought the good fight.

I am still fighting, but I am not depending on anyone to help me.

I can’t do it myself, but with God, all things are possible.

I  have been betrayed, that is true.

But I have not betrayed myself and that is of utmost importance.

What others do, they are accountable for.  I will stand for myself and cling to what I know to be true.

In the end, I will be standing on the rock and as long as I stand on the rock, the uncertainly of the world cannot touch me.

On this certainty, I can rely.

Little else, once all the obstacles are cleared away, matters.

I am who I was created to be and while I am constantly evolving, learning and making strides, I will make mistakes.

That is the beauty of being human that saves us all from the burden of perfection.

Learning the hard lessons is what makes us stronger today than we were before;  without them, we would always be the same and I can’t think of a worse fate than always being what I was.

Be well, dream big, live every moment and know that you are cherished by One who will not let you down, not even when you deserve it.

And be trustworthy.

Be the one that can be trusted and counted on to accept, without judgement or deceit, that which is willingly given to you.

It’s important.

Love is the most powerful of emotions

Love and trust are the most powerful of emotions