During our lives we place our trust in others - parents, friends, employers, employees, partners, spouses, doctors, police, car mechanics, other road users, pilots and, surprisingly, our Members of Parliament and local councillors. We would rather trust than not trust.
Humans do have a natural disposition to trust - however it is so very easy to destroy that trust - and once someone shows they cannot be trusted - the rest of us heed the warning in the knowledge their actions, words and promises are lies and deceit.
In return for giving others our trust we expect others to be honest. To keep their word, to be reliable, to be open, and not to lie or mislead us. Unfortunately, all too often we are shown our trust has been misplaced - in workplaces, in courts, in Parliament, in those who have power over us, and in family matters.
Initially many of us still go on trusting, giving those who have betrayed us the benefit of the doubt, which shows what decent people we are. We don’t want to be wrong about them so we try to overlook the first and second time it occurs, but eventually we lose complete trust and stop taking their words and actions at face value. We realise they are trying to manipulate us, thinking perhaps that we are fools.
How can trust anyone who has betrayed you? For that is what it is - betrayal. You cannot. If just one person knows you cannot be trusted - soon you will be unable to hide the fact from everyone else who comes in contact with you. As Abraham Lincoln said ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.’
Humans do have a natural disposition to trust - however it is so very easy to destroy that trust - and once someone shows they cannot be trusted - the rest of us heed the warning in the knowledge their actions, words and promises are lies and deceit.
In return for giving others our trust we expect others to be honest. To keep their word, to be reliable, to be open, and not to lie or mislead us. Unfortunately, all too often we are shown our trust has been misplaced - in workplaces, in courts, in Parliament, in those who have power over us, and in family matters.
Initially many of us still go on trusting, giving those who have betrayed us the benefit of the doubt, which shows what decent people we are. We don’t want to be wrong about them so we try to overlook the first and second time it occurs, but eventually we lose complete trust and stop taking their words and actions at face value. We realise they are trying to manipulate us, thinking perhaps that we are fools.
How can trust anyone who has betrayed you? For that is what it is - betrayal. You cannot. If just one person knows you cannot be trusted - soon you will be unable to hide the fact from everyone else who comes in contact with you. As Abraham Lincoln said ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.’
I have met some compulsive liars in my life - some were boastful, some were arrogant, some beleived their own lies, some believed they lied for the good of others, some to control others.
Regardless of the reason, their word was not to be trusted, but perhaps the worst, are those who continue to assume the face frienship, and the air of ‘I can be trusted’, while scheming to work in underhand ways to undermine you. They continue to smile that smile of friendship but behind that face they are smirking to themselves, congratulating themselves at the control they believe they still have. They believe you are so gullible you believe them. They think they have got the better of you and have achieved their aims. They have no respect for anyone, least of all those they have betrayed, and sometimes even design to malign and critcize them to others in order to cloak themselves in apparent honesty, and create doubt.
I read once that we place the means of our own destruction into the hands of our enemies. This is particularly true of these people who break the trust of others for once your 'honest' face has been exposed as false, everyone's trust in you has gone forever.
That trust can then never be regained however hard you try and in additon you have made an enemy, and have placed in their hands the means of your own destruction - for who else will they tell of your betrayal? Who knows where that might lead - especially if one has a reputation to lose - for then you are branded as a liar, untrustworthy, someone who betrays, who is not as upright as they would have others believe, and cannot be trusted.
Breaking trust is digging a big hole and then finding the sides caving in on you.
Reputation said 'If once we sever,
Our chance of future meeting is but vain;
Who parts from me, must look to part for ever,
For Reputation lost - comes not again.
(From Love, Death and Reputation-Charles Lamb)
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