Trust Shattered

It is amazing how quickly we learn to distrust, isn't it?

Trusting people is second nature to me. Why wouldn't I believe what people say? What have they done to prove themselves untrustworthy?

I do have a suspicious nature and my spidey senses do tend to tingle when something (or someone) seems to be too good to be true. But even then, I try to take a step back, research a little (gotta love "Google") and wait before I slap a label on a person or incident.

My most recent story comes from the give-away items I have posted and several on-line auction sales.

My stats are these:

Free items - a total of twenty one items were given away to eighteen different people (a few people took me up on a few offers). Other than the frustration of promising an item to someone who was an hour late in picking it up and declining numerous other offers as I awaited pick-up, I had a 100% rate of people following through on their promises.

Auction site sales - out of a total of twelve sold items and ten pick-ups, nine out of ten of those people followed through as agreed. Ninety percent.

One person tainted my 100% success rate within both of these stats. One person out of twenty eight. Yet now I am officially jaded.

I have often pondered over the fact that some people seem to have such a negative view on the world, people and issues of trust.

In my little utopian world of believing trust begets trust and do unto others as you'd have them do unto you and believing in people, I thought the distrusters of the world must have a different philosophy than me, thus this distrust of the human race.

After this week? I am beginning to believe that perhaps their experience with the world has been just slightly worse than mine. Two out of twenty eight would make me grumpier than I became with just "one". Three? And I may have never trusted again.

I think of when the trust I valued over every single other thing within a relationship was broken. I shattered into a million/trillion tiny shattered pieces. Because I trusted this person implicitly. One incident out of a million/trillion and I broke.

I think of the relationship I had that was built on distrust. He lied to me so much I never trusted him. So I didn't break into a million pieces when that relationship ended. Instead, I finally started piecing myself back together.

Trust.

It is everything in my world. I would rather hear a truth that hurts me to the core of my being over a lie any day of the week.

So there, Auction Site Winner!! You didn't break me. But you shattered my 100% success rate. But guess what? Another buyer wanted that item anyway. She will pick it up today. I trust her. Implicitly. Because she proved herself trustworthy the first time she made a promise.

I still win.

It is more than selling my item to the second highest bidder. It is because I'm willing to trust again.

P.S. In other "news" a potential daycare family from Columbia, who I have been corresponding with via the Internets over the course of the past three months sent me a message from Toronto last night. They will be in Saskatoon today. We will meet this week. And do you know what? Even though my spidey senses were on fire when I read her first message (who looks for a daycare when live half a world away??), when she didn't do any of the things scam artist do, to try and con an unsuspecting victim out of their money, I started to trust her. Now that she is this close, I can say I DO trust her.

Trust is a gift. Embrace it when you can and hopefully it will attract more trust worthy people into your life. Hopefully. Because now that I know the reality of how one incident can jade a person, I understand your distrustfulness. Or at least I'm trying to.