Do church camps and company picnics still do trust falls? You know, where 6 pimply 13 year olds put another up on a picnic table, arms crossed in a pimply sacrificial pose to fall back into the outstretched arms of the other campers? The adult version is much better because watching videos of Ted from accounting’s 240 pound carcass rip through the outstretched arms of a sales team who still think they could start for their local high school football team but who are in fact fluffy and weak, gives me great pleasure. I mean I told y’all I’m getting nicer. I still like football in the groin videos.
I like tracking the path of my logic sometimes. Maybe not my logic but my thought process. Yesterday a friend said she empathized with most of my posts. I googled empathy as I thought I would dig into that a little. Then I thought “empathy or trust”. Then I thought TRUST FALL and Ted was bouncing of the pine straw. Good stuff. Life doesn’t have to always be so damn serious.
Whoever the guy or gal was who invented the trust fall was, kudos. A simple team building exercise meant to bring people together. By now though it’s become a cliche of what trust is. “We are here to catch you,” says Steve from sales. This is the ultimate irony. No one in the sales department trusts anyone. That’s why they are good at sales.
I know a deep dive into my thoughts on corporate interrelations wasn’t in the forefront of your mind this morning but trust is a cool concept. It’s as fragile as almost any of our feelings and likely the bedrock of all our relationships. Without trust there is. no friendship. Without friendship. There is no love. Without love. There is no anything. We have to be willing to give all of ourselves and to do that we have to trust that it will be received, warts and all by others. They in return have to do the same. Elementary concepts I know, but when was the last time you thought about it?
Here’s the sentence about how it feels when someone breaks your trust. Nothing more needs to be said. You immediately felt it.
I’m not sure I’ve really ever considered trust much. It truly is something you build with others. I do know that I trust almost everyone upon meeting them. I think that people in general are good and if given the chance, will do right by you. If you’re waiting for the horror stories of me being burned, they aren’t coming. As a business owner I’ve only been stolen from a few times by employees and I’ve forgiven all of them. I mean I fired their asses and had one arrested but I hold no ill will. Thankfully these interactions haven’t made me walk around sure that everyone is trying to screw me, take from me or kill me, as this would be exhausting.
As I’ve gotten a little more smarterer, and as I’m considering this today, like most everything, we build trust, ergo, friendship and love through communication. Over the past few years I’ve watched a couple of my relationships splinter and fall apart, some for good, simply from poor communication. I’ve found that this communication isn’t as much about what we say as it is what we don’t say, and what we assume and fill in on our own to complete the narrative in our head. We don’t just hate Ted from accounting because he makes us do expense reports. We hate him because we decide that he must enjoy making us miserable by re-doing them and submitting on deadlines and fuck that guy. Ted probably just wishes we liked him. No happy ending here. No one likes you Ted from accounting.
So today if you’ve got the opportunity, yell TRUST FALL and lean into a friend to see where y’all stand. Worst case you hit the floor, best case your friend catches you and you only get the COVID, a no brainer price to pay for trust.
Communicate, trust, love.
This concludes my second TED talk.
#hugsandhi5s
