I knew you when……

Once upon a time trust seemed so naive, so innocent.

We knew one another before we could talk, before we could walk.

The unspoken word became the glue, the bond that held our lives together in a bonded state of growth and friendship. Through our younger, through our formative years. Trust founded on trying to figure out a big world within the moldable and kind mind of a maturing body.

Exactly.

Then.

One day.

Trust is broken.

Forever.

There were signs, symptoms and circumstances that eked their way into daily interactions. On the playground, in the classroom, after school activities. Weekends. The telephone that was once the trusted connector.

Then became the gossip spreader propaganda presenter and trust avoider.

What happens when trust in friendship is halted? Broken.A move to the other side of intended destruction becomes in order. The order of the day. Where the destination is for some becomes a fork in the road. Of life decisions.

Trust issues.

Big issues.

Small issues.

Never ending issues or sown seed of doubt can make the mind wander to places of uncertainty, doubt, confusion. Those are tough soil and lands to inhabit. Tough seeds to hoe and sow.

I think,

Most of us desire,

To trust.

To be trusted.

However, not all of us can be,

Trusted.

Or.

Trust.

So often, we wish, desire, to trust again.

Maybe keep another closer than at arm’s length…

When we are our youngest, we seldom have the choice in who we trust, the choices presented to us. We have a limited amount of freedom, unless of course, we fold our arms across our bodies, stomp our foot and say,

”No.”

We never really had a good feeling about who was actually in the corner. Our corner. In the midst of the moment, in the middle of the fight.

Fast forward to adulthood and those remnants, those memories become forefront in the mind of a sometimes daily back and forth of doubt, hone and sown.

When young, we are at the mercy of the adults in the room. We learn truth by what we absorb, by what we learn. White lies. Black lies. Big lies. Small lies. Gargantuan lies. Tiny lies. Are all the ways in which our young lives decipher truth between and amongst the lies.

”Do as I say, not as I do.” The adult mantra of control over the kid.

Rational.

Irrational.

Been there.

Done that.

Challenge becomes the name of the game in both matters big and small. When truth is on shaky foundation. What to believe? Who to believe.? How to believe?

It sucks.

Is daunting.

Tiring and small minded building.

The opposite of nation building.

Rational.

Irrational.

In Gulliver’s Travels, “A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms.” The journey, the voyage of trust is explored. You see. The Houyhnhnms were such rational creatures and they found dishonesty almost unintelligible. As one of them explains to Gulliver, “the use of speech was to make us understand one another, and to receive information of facts;”(wjb)

Yes!

Understand.

The power of understand is in deed powerful

Peaceful. Even.

The peace that passes understanding.

Except. When present and presented as the lies as the glue holding it all together.

The impossibilities seem endless.

The doubt ongoing.

The crumbling of foundations and nations and trust.

Further, with the Houyhnhnms, if anyone ‘said the thing which was not’ [the Houyhnhnms awkward locution for referring to the curious practice of telling lies], these ends were defeated. (wjb)

Translation:

Dishonesty is one of the strings of fragile deception that can hold a “thing” together. Just to make a point, just to make a case, just to make a buck, just to make a war. In the end it doesn’t really matter the “how”.

The business model, the role model, the model model, the make and model. All may suffer consequences of the dishonesty.

Dishonesty would have no role to play in a world that revered reality and was inhabited by fully rational creatures. (js)

Gotcha.

I get it.

I have been known to pack my bag, my baggage, and attend, from time to time, the camp of irrationality. Especially when things before my eyes seemed a crazed haze of disbelief.

Phew.

Good to know that I am in the majority here. Of the fact that human beings are not fully rational. Human imperfection exists.

Gives me some solid and sold hope…..

Irish satirist, Jonathan Swift took the plunge to say delightfully, “Humans, unlike Houyhnhnms, harbor a disparate array of tendencies and impulses that do not spontaneously harmonize with reason.

Phew. Again.

There are a whole lotta big words in that thought and sentence.

Gratefully

Thankfully.

I get it.

The concept of irrationality, honesty, dishonesty.

And the like.

The challenge of the day, when we are tiny tots, is to study the adults before us and see if they mean what they say, or say what they mean.

Even then.

Trust is never guaranteed.

Human imperfection is though.

Where to draw the line?

I know what I think.

There is both beauty and barf in the specifics.

To be able, capable to keep it all down is oftentimes,

A Vomit of Truth.🤢🤮

My apologies for becoming rather gross.

But to me, it is

Truth.

Coming out to roost.

A “visual.” If you would so indulge my methods.☺️

I never said it was easy, pretty even.

But.

Necessary.

Kind of like the younger child in my mind crossing my arms, stomping my foot and saying,

”No.”

This is not right.

You were wrong.

To pin me in your corner— to get what you wanted.

As I recall, after all, you were, you are an adult.

Quit your crying.

Learning at a young age that the devil is in the details, oftentimes buried in the specifics is actually a free-ing exercise is maturing.

Bonus: It breeds strong leaders.

Seldom wholly dishonest ones, too.

Human imperfection is universal.

Be wary of the stories that don’t feel right. Ones who speak with what the Houyhnhnms considered spoken with “spin”. Stories so out of control the person speaking forgets what and why they are spinning. What they are, really doing is spinning lives of others into dizzying arrays of more dishonesty.

Spinning into dishonest webs. People’s lives are, can become at stake. Stuck in these webs of dishonesty, irrationality, and doubt.

Better to have told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

We would possibly not, then, be on the verge of World War III.

Wishing we did the right thing in the first place.

We learn as children, from our study of adults, honesty is easier said than done.

As we grow older, more mature, we come to learn it is easier done than said.

Truth.

Honesty.

Try it.

You’ll like it!

What goes around comes around……

Suffer the true consequences.

And.

You will have no regrets