Taken on trust

I've been thinking a good deal about trust over the last few days. Who do I trust? Why do I trust them? Who did I trust but no longer and why? Those kinds of things.

It's all about where you put your feet, isn't it? When I put my foot on this chair, I trust it. So much so that I haven't used a stepladder at home for years. I trust it because it looks solid, it feels stable and it has never let me down before.

Being able to trust someone is huge. Being prepared to put my metaphorical foot on the relationship we have, trusting that I'm not going to fall. And when I trust someone, really trust them, I will do what they say, even if I don't understand why, or (sometimes) if I want to do something else.

When I was eighteen, someone told me that my life would be like walking down a flight of stairs, each stair only appearing when I trusted my foot to it. Scary. But when I look back over the (several) intervening years, it's been kinda like that.

And the stairs have always been there.