Trustee vs. Truster

Trust is both important and dangerous! Let me tell you why...

It is important because it allows us to form relationships with others and to depend on others—for love, for advice, for help when our car breaks down, or what have you—especially when we know that no outside force (ex. the law) compels them to give us such things. Trust always involves the risk that the trusted person (we'll call them the “trustee”) will not pull through for the trusting person (we'll call them the “truster”). If the truster could guarantee that the trustee would pull through, then the truster would have no need to trust that person. The truster therefore cannot assume, while trusting, that the trustee will do what s/he is trusted to do because the trustee has no legitimate choice in the matter. Since people often can choose whether to pull through for us, we often need to trust them...WOW that was a mouthful and a half...Ok let's keep going!

But since trust necessarily involves risk, it can also be dangerous. What we risk while trusting is the loss of the things that we entrust to others, including our self-respect, perhaps, which can be shattered by the betrayal of our trust. Because trust is risky and can be dangerous, the following question is of particular importance: “Under what conditions is trust justified?”

Now to save myself from having to go into a completely boring philosophical answer, I am going to just put my own little spin on things...

I am that girl that will open up to anyone! I would tell the wall all my secrets if I knew he was listening. I feel as if meeting new people is a chance to learn a new story and to see how our stories are similar or different. I tend to be very trusting and I can usually sense when a friendship is about to blossom, well I used to be a good judge of that, until recently. So justifying trust is going to be hard to think about but here is my solution...

Love all, trust a few.
~William Shakespeare

What do you think? Under what conditions is trust justified?