Thursday, April 13, 2006
Who should you trust?
"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."
--Shakespeare
I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare (despite having spent 4 HOURS watching "Hamlet" last night), but I give him full credit for his grasp of human nature; although loving ALL is a little broad (I maintain that evil people should be an exception), overall that quote is as good of a summary of how you should deal with people as any I've seen, especially in so few words.
In modern times, it's become fashionable to have extravagant levels of trust in all sorts of people, including people we should DIStrust with a passion; we don't seem to know what trust MEANS anymore. Given that, let's review:
Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/trust?view=uk
When you say you trust someone, then, you're asserting that you believe them to be reliable, honest, etc; considering that these are non-trivial assertions, wouldn't it make sense for them to be reflections of the FACTS? Of course... but they rarely are. Take a moment and think of all the people in your life that you trust completely; then, think of all the people in your life who have NEVER lied to you, broken a promise to you, failed to do what they were supposed to do, or otherwise done anything wrong. Chances are that the 1st group has a fair # of folks in it; the 2nd group probably isn't a group at all, because you probably don't know ANYONE among those close enough to you for trust to become an issue who hasn't at least failed to call when they said they would or to show up on time... in other words, you've placed your full trust in people who objectively aren't worthy of that level of trust.
Furthermore, it's unlikely that YOU are worthy of perfect trust either... right? Surprised? Don't feel bad; it's a rare person these days who's objectively deserving of being totally trusted.
We have such contempt for virtue in this country that it never occurs to us that a person's reliability should count for ANYTHING, much less be the basis for trust; instead, we base trust, stupidly and dead-wrong-edly, on whether we share DNA with a person, or have known them a long time, or care about them, or are sleeping with them... as if being in some sort of a relationship with US somehow magically adds trustworthiness to a person's character, or as if our affections would magically only be stimulated by trustworthy people. The reality is that we turn our noses up at people who really ARE trustworthy and fling ourselves at people of unproven virtue, or, more often, people whose virtue has already been proven to be weak at best, and give our trust willy-nilly, nearly BEGGING to be dumped on.
I can't tell you how many times I've gone through versions of the following:
Friend: blah blah blah he's so wonderful blah blah blah I TOTALLY trust him.
Me: Why?
Friend: What do you mean "why"? Because I LOVE him!!
Me: Trust is supposed to be based on a person's record of proper behavior, NOT on your raging hormones.
Friend: You're supposed to trust the people you love.
Me: Not unless they are in fact trustworthy.
Friend: He IS trustworthy.
Me: Oh? So you mean that wasn't YOU calling me every day complaining that he didn't call, didn't show up on time, forgot to do what he said he would and so forth?
Friend: Well... yeah... but those are minor things, you don't base trust on things like that.
Me: So what DO you base trust on, then, other than him not having committed a major crime to the best of your knowledge?
Friend: ... well... uh...
Me: Exactly. All you have available to judge the appropriate level of trust by are those countless little occasions where he either did the right thing or did NOT... and he's failed over and over, hasn't he?
Friend: Yeah, but... I don't care about that, I know he loves me, and I trust him because I know he won't hurt me.
Me: I can recall a dozen times that he HAS hurt you, and that's just the ones you've told me about; how does that lead to your belief that he won't keep right on hurting you with the same insensitive, thoughtless things he's done all along?
Friend: But he... but I...
Me: Has he had a bump on the head and had a total personality change? Has he undergone radical psychotherapy in the past few days? Did he suddenly find religion?
Friend: No...
Me: Then on what do you base your belief that a man who hasn't shown himself worthy of your trust is in fact trustworthy?
Friend: I don't care what you say, I love him and I'm still going to trust him!!
Me: {sigh}
2 months later:
Friend: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! I can't believe he cheated on me with my best friend/stole all my $/was dealing drugs from my house/gave me a venereal disease/was still seeing his ex-girlfriend!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! Why did I ever trust him?!!
Me: {SIGH}
What can you do to avoid being the one crying about how someone YOU trusted did you wrong? CHOOSE to give people only as much trust as they've earned. Trust isn't all or nothing; you can halfway trust them, 84% trust them, 12% trust them, whatever fits the facts. You can also have different levels of trust for different areas; you might completely trust a friend to be in your house without stealing your stuff, but only 40% trust them to show up on time, and 5% trust them to repay $ they've borrowed. What matters isn't the ability to come up with a precise numerical value for everything, but to be consciously aware of each person's track record and to USE IT to determine just how far you'll trust them in any given situation... or even if you can validly trust them at all.
Almost without exception, there are many, MANY warning signs that a person is untrustworthy before they drop the bomb on us, but if we like or love someone we tend to brush off any # of wrongdoings as insignificant, thus allowing the evil types to slam us at their leisure; if instead we force ourselves to accept that EVERY untrustworthy act MUST become part of our judgment of how much trust we'll place in a person, we can restrict our inner circle to those who deserve to be there, and not expect more reliability from those folks than they're able to produce. Yeah, it's an effort, but far less of one than putting your life and heart back together after someone you'd have run a mile from if you'd been paying better attention got close enough to you to devastate you.
The romantics among you are undoubtedly wondering if you can have "true love" without having 100% trust in the other person; yes, of course you can... and you don't get anything extra for pretending someone's fully trustworthy when they're not. My own husband is the world's biggest screw-up, and thus totally UNtrustworthy over a broad range of categories; as a result, I don't trust him in most areas, BUT, our relationship has outlasted countless others of people who loudly proclaimed their total trust for their partners, because he's proved trustworthy in the category that really matters-the only woman whose life he screws up is MINE.
I can live with that.
--Shakespeare
I'm not a big fan of Shakespeare (despite having spent 4 HOURS watching "Hamlet" last night), but I give him full credit for his grasp of human nature; although loving ALL is a little broad (I maintain that evil people should be an exception), overall that quote is as good of a summary of how you should deal with people as any I've seen, especially in so few words.
In modern times, it's become fashionable to have extravagant levels of trust in all sorts of people, including people we should DIStrust with a passion; we don't seem to know what trust MEANS anymore. Given that, let's review:
Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/trust?view=uk
When you say you trust someone, then, you're asserting that you believe them to be reliable, honest, etc; considering that these are non-trivial assertions, wouldn't it make sense for them to be reflections of the FACTS? Of course... but they rarely are. Take a moment and think of all the people in your life that you trust completely; then, think of all the people in your life who have NEVER lied to you, broken a promise to you, failed to do what they were supposed to do, or otherwise done anything wrong. Chances are that the 1st group has a fair # of folks in it; the 2nd group probably isn't a group at all, because you probably don't know ANYONE among those close enough to you for trust to become an issue who hasn't at least failed to call when they said they would or to show up on time... in other words, you've placed your full trust in people who objectively aren't worthy of that level of trust.
Furthermore, it's unlikely that YOU are worthy of perfect trust either... right? Surprised? Don't feel bad; it's a rare person these days who's objectively deserving of being totally trusted.
We have such contempt for virtue in this country that it never occurs to us that a person's reliability should count for ANYTHING, much less be the basis for trust; instead, we base trust, stupidly and dead-wrong-edly, on whether we share DNA with a person, or have known them a long time, or care about them, or are sleeping with them... as if being in some sort of a relationship with US somehow magically adds trustworthiness to a person's character, or as if our affections would magically only be stimulated by trustworthy people. The reality is that we turn our noses up at people who really ARE trustworthy and fling ourselves at people of unproven virtue, or, more often, people whose virtue has already been proven to be weak at best, and give our trust willy-nilly, nearly BEGGING to be dumped on.
I can't tell you how many times I've gone through versions of the following:
Friend: blah blah blah he's so wonderful blah blah blah I TOTALLY trust him.
Me: Why?
Friend: What do you mean "why"? Because I LOVE him!!
Me: Trust is supposed to be based on a person's record of proper behavior, NOT on your raging hormones.
Friend: You're supposed to trust the people you love.
Me: Not unless they are in fact trustworthy.
Friend: He IS trustworthy.
Me: Oh? So you mean that wasn't YOU calling me every day complaining that he didn't call, didn't show up on time, forgot to do what he said he would and so forth?
Friend: Well... yeah... but those are minor things, you don't base trust on things like that.
Me: So what DO you base trust on, then, other than him not having committed a major crime to the best of your knowledge?
Friend: ... well... uh...
Me: Exactly. All you have available to judge the appropriate level of trust by are those countless little occasions where he either did the right thing or did NOT... and he's failed over and over, hasn't he?
Friend: Yeah, but... I don't care about that, I know he loves me, and I trust him because I know he won't hurt me.
Me: I can recall a dozen times that he HAS hurt you, and that's just the ones you've told me about; how does that lead to your belief that he won't keep right on hurting you with the same insensitive, thoughtless things he's done all along?
Friend: But he... but I...
Me: Has he had a bump on the head and had a total personality change? Has he undergone radical psychotherapy in the past few days? Did he suddenly find religion?
Friend: No...
Me: Then on what do you base your belief that a man who hasn't shown himself worthy of your trust is in fact trustworthy?
Friend: I don't care what you say, I love him and I'm still going to trust him!!
Me: {sigh}
2 months later:
Friend: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! I can't believe he cheated on me with my best friend/stole all my $/was dealing drugs from my house/gave me a venereal disease/was still seeing his ex-girlfriend!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! Why did I ever trust him?!!
Me: {SIGH}
What can you do to avoid being the one crying about how someone YOU trusted did you wrong? CHOOSE to give people only as much trust as they've earned. Trust isn't all or nothing; you can halfway trust them, 84% trust them, 12% trust them, whatever fits the facts. You can also have different levels of trust for different areas; you might completely trust a friend to be in your house without stealing your stuff, but only 40% trust them to show up on time, and 5% trust them to repay $ they've borrowed. What matters isn't the ability to come up with a precise numerical value for everything, but to be consciously aware of each person's track record and to USE IT to determine just how far you'll trust them in any given situation... or even if you can validly trust them at all.
Almost without exception, there are many, MANY warning signs that a person is untrustworthy before they drop the bomb on us, but if we like or love someone we tend to brush off any # of wrongdoings as insignificant, thus allowing the evil types to slam us at their leisure; if instead we force ourselves to accept that EVERY untrustworthy act MUST become part of our judgment of how much trust we'll place in a person, we can restrict our inner circle to those who deserve to be there, and not expect more reliability from those folks than they're able to produce. Yeah, it's an effort, but far less of one than putting your life and heart back together after someone you'd have run a mile from if you'd been paying better attention got close enough to you to devastate you.
The romantics among you are undoubtedly wondering if you can have "true love" without having 100% trust in the other person; yes, of course you can... and you don't get anything extra for pretending someone's fully trustworthy when they're not. My own husband is the world's biggest screw-up, and thus totally UNtrustworthy over a broad range of categories; as a result, I don't trust him in most areas, BUT, our relationship has outlasted countless others of people who loudly proclaimed their total trust for their partners, because he's proved trustworthy in the category that really matters-the only woman whose life he screws up is MINE.
I can live with that.
Monday, April 10, 2006
TWO raccoons!!!!!!!!!! :-)
There seems to be a bunch of people who use Blogger who're losing their blogs or portions thereof recently; if you haven't already done so, PLEASE backup your template and all your posts... do it whatever site you blog on, even if you have your own domain, because ANY system can lose all your stuff. There are tech ways to do this, but even if you don't know them you can still do what *I* do and copy everything into Word files; all that matters is that what you've worked so hard to create doesn't just vanish.
If a blog you enjoy appears to have been deleted, don't give up on it; try it again in a few days, and it'll very likely be back... hopefully with all its former posts.
I caught Joel Osteen tonight (I'm getting back into the habit of watching his show again, because I'm remembering to look for it at midnight rather than 11PM), and he made an interesting assertion; if there's something that bothers you when you encounter it, or that you don't handle well, God doesn't shield you from it, He keeps putting it in your life so you'll learn to overcome your issues with it, thus becoming the better person He wants you to be. It DOES often seem that bothersome things flock around more than random chance would predict; MY explanation for it is that we tend to dwell on unpleasantries, and the "shape" of the energy we expend in doing so draws them to us... as usual, Osteen and I have perceived the existence of the same odd phenomenon and explained it from within our differing spiritual frameworks, with the only real difference being that he presumes intent from the energy source he sees at work (God) and I see no reason to attribute any such sentience to the engine of karma.
Ok, you've been patient, so on to the raccoons; if you live in a country that doesn't have them, there are lots of pics here
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/4892/furfriends.html
Aren't they CUTE? They're some of the smartest critters in the world, too; I've been eager beyond words to get close to one again, for what will be the 1st time since my childhood.
Last night, I heard a crunching sound, looked up, and was thrilled to see a raccoon eating kibble on the patio and peering in at me. As before, I started the chant of "Cooooonie, coooooonie" to get him used to my voice... and to alert my husband that we had a visitor. The raccoon seemed smaller to me than he had before, but I told myself that I was being silly, and just not remembering clearly; what else could it be, right? My husband, who hurriedly went into the kitchen where he could observe without scaring the coon, hadn't witnessed the original visit, so he couldn't judge one way or the other; he hadn't seen a raccoon since HE was a kid either, so he shared my excitement at seeing the sweet masked face looking alternately up at him and in at me.
Since the coonie had eaten a large pile of kibble, we figured that when he left he was done for the night, but a couple of hours later he returned (thank goodness we always automatically restock the food after an animal leaves!!) and began casually picking pieces up with his handlike paws and putting them in his mouth; my husband rushed back to the kitchen as soon as heard my ecstatic reaction, and we both watched intently... or rather all THREE of us did, because we were clearly under observation ourselves. It didn't seem like life could get any better than our shared rapture over our new friend... and then my husband gasped, "Look, there's TWO!!" and a 2nd coon sauntered into the feeding area. He was significantly bigger than the 1st one, and I'm certain that it was HIM I saw the 1st time, which would explain why the other one seemed "too small"; based on the size difference, we're assuming for now that the smaller one is a female, but until we see some sign of what anatomy each of them possesses this is just a guess.
We watched in awe as the TWO raccoons calmly shared the food and alternated dabbling about in the water dish; sometimes they drank, and sometimes they stood with their front paws in it, as they would in a natural body of water. They were only about a foot away from me, and couple of times one of them got their nose almost up to the sliding glass door and looked right into my eyes; they also stood up (they can balance on their hind legs for a long time) and looked through the kitchen window at my husband... they can't possibly have been enjoying us as much as we were enjoying THEM, but a good time was had by all. They showed no sign of fear, were clearly hearing my voice (their ears would twitch and swivel) and were unconcerned, and became comfortable enough to sit while they ate; all this was a BIG change from the possums, who were very shy and slow to get used to us moving around and being really close to them.
Eventually, having wiped out the kibble, they wandered off into the landscaping; they didn't come back tonight, but they've each eaten here twice now, and they WILL come back soon. I'm already bursting with the desire to try handfeeding them, and I'll start attempting it soon, as long as things keep running smoothly; raccoons are very easy to persuade to take food from people, because they're big and smart enough to figure it's safe for them, and I've fed them in the past with no problems. I should point out, however, that raccoons are wild animals, and there's always the potential for disaster when interacting that closely with them; they have long, sharp teeth and claws, and if frightened, sick, hurt or threatened can be expected to use them. I don't want to deny anyone the joy I get from critters, but I also don't want anyone getting hurt because they read my post and then tried to shove food in an unprepared creature's face; unless you've got a really good rapport with animals, it's best to not try to coax them to cross the barrier between humans and wild things.
My life has felt a little empty since the possums disappeared, so I'm blissfully happy to have new critters to love; I hope that my long nights of type-type-typing and video watching will be regularly interrupted by those masked faces outside my door from now on. :-)
If a blog you enjoy appears to have been deleted, don't give up on it; try it again in a few days, and it'll very likely be back... hopefully with all its former posts.
I caught Joel Osteen tonight (I'm getting back into the habit of watching his show again, because I'm remembering to look for it at midnight rather than 11PM), and he made an interesting assertion; if there's something that bothers you when you encounter it, or that you don't handle well, God doesn't shield you from it, He keeps putting it in your life so you'll learn to overcome your issues with it, thus becoming the better person He wants you to be. It DOES often seem that bothersome things flock around more than random chance would predict; MY explanation for it is that we tend to dwell on unpleasantries, and the "shape" of the energy we expend in doing so draws them to us... as usual, Osteen and I have perceived the existence of the same odd phenomenon and explained it from within our differing spiritual frameworks, with the only real difference being that he presumes intent from the energy source he sees at work (God) and I see no reason to attribute any such sentience to the engine of karma.
Ok, you've been patient, so on to the raccoons; if you live in a country that doesn't have them, there are lots of pics here
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Vines/4892/furfriends.html
Aren't they CUTE? They're some of the smartest critters in the world, too; I've been eager beyond words to get close to one again, for what will be the 1st time since my childhood.
Last night, I heard a crunching sound, looked up, and was thrilled to see a raccoon eating kibble on the patio and peering in at me. As before, I started the chant of "Cooooonie, coooooonie" to get him used to my voice... and to alert my husband that we had a visitor. The raccoon seemed smaller to me than he had before, but I told myself that I was being silly, and just not remembering clearly; what else could it be, right? My husband, who hurriedly went into the kitchen where he could observe without scaring the coon, hadn't witnessed the original visit, so he couldn't judge one way or the other; he hadn't seen a raccoon since HE was a kid either, so he shared my excitement at seeing the sweet masked face looking alternately up at him and in at me.
Since the coonie had eaten a large pile of kibble, we figured that when he left he was done for the night, but a couple of hours later he returned (thank goodness we always automatically restock the food after an animal leaves!!) and began casually picking pieces up with his handlike paws and putting them in his mouth; my husband rushed back to the kitchen as soon as heard my ecstatic reaction, and we both watched intently... or rather all THREE of us did, because we were clearly under observation ourselves. It didn't seem like life could get any better than our shared rapture over our new friend... and then my husband gasped, "Look, there's TWO!!" and a 2nd coon sauntered into the feeding area. He was significantly bigger than the 1st one, and I'm certain that it was HIM I saw the 1st time, which would explain why the other one seemed "too small"; based on the size difference, we're assuming for now that the smaller one is a female, but until we see some sign of what anatomy each of them possesses this is just a guess.
We watched in awe as the TWO raccoons calmly shared the food and alternated dabbling about in the water dish; sometimes they drank, and sometimes they stood with their front paws in it, as they would in a natural body of water. They were only about a foot away from me, and couple of times one of them got their nose almost up to the sliding glass door and looked right into my eyes; they also stood up (they can balance on their hind legs for a long time) and looked through the kitchen window at my husband... they can't possibly have been enjoying us as much as we were enjoying THEM, but a good time was had by all. They showed no sign of fear, were clearly hearing my voice (their ears would twitch and swivel) and were unconcerned, and became comfortable enough to sit while they ate; all this was a BIG change from the possums, who were very shy and slow to get used to us moving around and being really close to them.
Eventually, having wiped out the kibble, they wandered off into the landscaping; they didn't come back tonight, but they've each eaten here twice now, and they WILL come back soon. I'm already bursting with the desire to try handfeeding them, and I'll start attempting it soon, as long as things keep running smoothly; raccoons are very easy to persuade to take food from people, because they're big and smart enough to figure it's safe for them, and I've fed them in the past with no problems. I should point out, however, that raccoons are wild animals, and there's always the potential for disaster when interacting that closely with them; they have long, sharp teeth and claws, and if frightened, sick, hurt or threatened can be expected to use them. I don't want to deny anyone the joy I get from critters, but I also don't want anyone getting hurt because they read my post and then tried to shove food in an unprepared creature's face; unless you've got a really good rapport with animals, it's best to not try to coax them to cross the barrier between humans and wild things.
My life has felt a little empty since the possums disappeared, so I'm blissfully happy to have new critters to love; I hope that my long nights of type-type-typing and video watching will be regularly interrupted by those masked faces outside my door from now on. :-)
