Candor it appears, is the magical elixir in this day. Fed up with the plasticity of the world, people are clamoring for “authenticity”. In a world where leadership and politics mostly feels like a sham, more and more people seem to crave the honesty. 

It has taken awhile to realize but being a trusting person, I thought honesty was supposed to be the default. (I’ll give you a moment to quit laughing). I get that there’s bad people and that people have ulterior motives, but I’ve still gotta live with a “default to trust”. I think that people are innately good and that it feels otherwise because that’s all we hear about. The negative. 

Honest interaction is what society is built upon. Yet people are still taken aback when I say the thing they want people to say. Like they are surprised and wonder what I’m up to. I’m up to believing in people despite ample evidence to the contrary. But is that true?  

My platform of trust is built upon the invisible. That for every negative interaction any one person has with another, there’s millions of others that are executed with the same trust default. We just don’t celebrate those interactions because celebrating no one stealing your favorite pen off your desk seems a little dramatic.  Yet the “news” and “people on social media” practically throw a negative ticker tape at any real or perceived injustice in the (their) world. I’ve got too much real life happening to dwell on that, and, news flash, you do too. 

It’s interesting to me that we can be wired to trust yet relish in the downfall of others. Seems like a faulty wiring issue in the human brain that required too much time to fix so God just said. “Meh, they’ll be alright...”. Then someone created TMZ and everyone in heaven was like “um, Jesus, we have a problem.”  

We relish in the downfall of others so the media gives it to us, which rewards them, so they do it again and on and on. Anyone ever hear of Pavlov and his dogs?  DING! DROOL!  REPEAT!  

Like many days I get this far and have to ask myself what the bigger point of a post is. For this I think it’s this. Embrace the trust. Embrace your natural default to honest interactions.  Don’t live in fear that everyone is out to eff you over.  Try and recognize your inclination to relish in the failure of another. 

Seems pretty simple. 

#hugsandhi5s