Trust on its Side
Three shiny gray rocks were before me: which would I choose? For an upcoming weekend getaway, I wanted to take one with me for contemplation—an appropriate spiritual exercise at a favorite retreat center, where quietude awaited. Their small shop sells the rocks, etched with various words such as courage or grief, to be carried in a pocket or small bag for reflection. While packing, I took a sip of coffee and placed the trio together in a little circle on a colorful dresser doily. I stared intently, then softened my gaze to receive a sign, as if examining their stony auras.
Soon thereafter, I found myself studying the intricate detail of the doily—alas, the unintended object. The gift from a dear friend elicited fond memories from our last visit. Such is the mind in its wanderings, eternally prepared for involuntary distractions of all kinds. With some effort and assistance from peaceful places, we can approach the single pointedness of the present moment. For this purpose, I wondered which one of the three to bring: the one inciting emotion, thereby framing my inward journey. Might this stone change my life forever? The dramatic unfolding awaited. Another sip.
One choice was “faith”, imparting warm feelings of hope and devotion. Within deistic definitions or broader meanings involving universal spirit or the power of love (or whatever), faith only incited good will in my heart. Further, the word faith seemed quite binary: you either have it, or you don’t, where the actual omniscient object matters very little. If the object is nontheistic instead, then I could have easily imagined the plight of losing faith in something or someone. Contemplating lack of faith in, say, corporations, could be readily achieved; however, I do that enough during the evening news (even without cable). Faith is out.
The second word: “inspire”. Hmm…so many things readily inspire me: gardens, food, people, or the combination of all three at a lovely patio party. Besides fun with friends, I think of social entrepreneurism, passion for the environment, or being immersed in that book of novellas—encircling like a blanket over a leisurely afternoon, where napping is involved. Mmmm. And as for faith, I considered inspire’s opposite. What is uninspiring? Again, about people: those fixed in their views, as if critical thought was thrown out the window as too inconvenient for life. In the language of my post-millennial adult child—who may proclaim I used the adjective wrong: basic people are uninspiring.
The words faith and inspire produced fairly clear feelings. The third word was—you guessed it—trust. Even writing it makes my shoulders shudder, my whole body in a state of ugh – that? I took it and the coffee out to the patio—a more peaceful space to be uncomfortable. Initial feelings were a little like this:
My intentions aren’t to pooh-pooh trust. But trust is complicated; it brings out a lot of stuff that my conscious mind prefers to leave alone. The other two words brought images of rainbows and unicorns, whereas the concept of trust makes me want to run away. I imagine the quiet suffering of Elsa to build my impenetrable ice castle. The Pollyanna in me, however, encourages a trust-in-the-universe, new age version of the glad game. My feelings were all over the place with this one, ambivalence anchored to my core.
Trust is both friend and enemy, with great potential for heartbreak. The immediate feeling for trust was not pure evil—rather, a textured, uncomfortable, visceral gut energy that was asking for attention I did not want to give. For the weekend, the resistance imbedded within this word would be a background message, potentially carrying more weight within the context of my life. The trust rock had the most to say. It managed to provocatively nudge its way out of the NO symbol:
It's pure coincidence that the letters blend in with my patio table. Or is it? I can tell you this was not consciously planned. But I did buy the stones and the table in 2021 (the mind has such a remarkable ability to find meaning in random coalescence).
The etching escaped the jail of NO, but not totally away into the ether: part of me was holding it rather than chasing it away. The word was now nearby, hovering—hanging out patiently, in the foreground but partly camouflaged, inviting me to be not afraid.
In the dictionary definition of trust, one word that frequently appears is confidence. In statistics, the confidence interval is related to probabilities—and the realm of uncertainty. Trust can deepen over time – and that’s just it: universally, building trust takes time. In this way, it connects well to the financial portfolio definition: a long game that must be managed well. Once established, trust—or high confidence interval—indicates financial or personal reliability. Within a degree of certainty, the rock of trust should not disintegrate.
Except rocks do disintegrate, don’t they? Eons of erosion are testaments to this physical fact: all matter is made of bonded atoms, and under the right circumstances, bonds can break. Physical rocks can become something else…and so can all the chemical bonds in our bodies. Molecules and ions are constantly undergoing reactions, converting food and oxygen to energy and multitudes of other processes, re-establishing equilibria—including within the brain. The neural nets formed by learning, connection and relationships are also constantly in flux, subject to bond-breaking…thus possessing an inherent confidence interval, and therefore uncertainty.
Rock erosion also produces higher entropy, or disorder, which can mirror our own mind stance. When a trust is broken, a big mess is made on the inside and the mind goes into crisis; the consequent triage and recovery lowers entropy. However small, the uncertainty of trust is consistent with these ideas of disorder. Freezing into a state of unconditional trust—or rigid mistrust—is like insisting on zero entropy, a static, rather uninteresting existence that is theoretically impossible (and definitely basic). Further, zero entropy conflicts with the constant change of life, invariably leading to a place where a little disorder is a given, all the time—like inherent uncertainty.
My mixed feelings could mean that I’ve come to an honesty about the concept, perhaps as a nod to the bridge between a controlled, set path versus the unique journey that defines reality. We plan the best we can, but events rarely occur exactly as planned; we are ultimately tied to the actual. David Whyte delineates the knowing and not knowing—the boundary between “what you think is you” and “what you think is not you”—as the center of reality. There’s always uncertainty, however small. Our consequent attitude towards it can shift from defiant tolerance to neutral acknowledgment, or maybe even an embrace, in the spirit of championing life as it is, even with all that dreaded impermanence.
For the group photo of the three stones, what to do with the trust rock? I could have placed the word upside down as a diss or flipped the stone over to repress. What emerged was a rotated positioning that best captured my feelings about this word, on this day and throughout the retreat (and since). Trust is highly nuanced and complex—and as such, depicted on its side. (And do note the intricacies of the pretty doily.)
Trust called to me. That weekend, the stone invited me to trust, but not in all the usual ethereals like the process of life or the universe. Trust was calling me to entrust my life to the journey—not analytically in my head, but spiritually in my heart and observationally in my gut—to really believe in forging my unique and magnificently uncertain path. Elsa took the step of trusting in herself, even if it meant running away (and creating the lovable Olaf). I imagine uncertainty, held with that bit of always-entropy, hanging out on a couch with the core energy of my belly, the pieces chatting with each other as events and decisions unfold. Three internal stones of gut feeling, defined and described—and, yeah, Pollyanna’s there, too, bright-eyed and smiling, reminding us to be glad.
While we might know something is reliable, we can’t really know to the fullest degree. Trust enables us to not stress out (as much) about the really know. And when trust erodes, it’s our consequent management that asks us to continue trusting: our intentions, our choices, the power of the present moment…the “basics” of a more relaxed life.