Encounters with the Universe Yesterday, between appointments, I grabbed a seat in a busy coffee shop. I noticed a man sitting next to me, oblivious to all around him. He was wearing a headset and writing in a notebook. I'm not one to judge a book too much by its cover, but he seemed to be around 30, pale, blond, and like what Matt Damon would look like in Saving Private Ryan if he gained 60 pounds. His Zen engagement calendar was also on the table. I said, "Can I disturb you?" He looked up. I said, "I love seeing someone writing in a notebook. Can you read me something from the Zen book?" He said, "It's not a poem book. It's a calendar." "Can you read me something from your calendar?" He opened the book and read this: I quietly wrote in my journal, then, "Can I disturb you again?" I said, disturbing him. "What does 'trust' mean to you?" Long pause, then he said, "Trust means that you can relax."
He explained that "emptiness" was a positive concept, that when you are in touch with emptiness, you are in touch with your life force, and not filling your head with noisy chatter. When you see
plum blossoms
or hear the sound
of a small stone
hitting bamboo,
That is a letter
from the world
of emptiness.
Lil, you are one of the colours that makes the world beautiful.
Coffee, reading your words made my day. thx. I have been turning over some trust issues in my mind, but to the guy, the question must have seemed to come out of nowhere. I really liked his definition. If anyone's interested, I can write a little more about trust, here, later.
Interested. That is a very potent definition of trust. On my friend's birthday recently, he asked that we pose questions to him as gifts. He would then ponder them for a time, and get back to us. My question for him was:
It resulted in a conversation that is still ongoing. What mustn't we do?
ok, here goes: Trust or lack of trust underlies all relationships. We quickly, often subconsciously, learn who to trust and how much to trust and in which circumstances to trust. Sometimes we should trust a situation to play out according to expectations, but we don't for various reasons. The primary reason is past experience of disappointment. In my recent case, I trusted another person enough to leave a situation in his hands, but I didn't trust enough to let go of control. Trust-Control, Trust-Control... If you control too much when others thought they were trusted, it damages relationships. If you trust too early or too much when others need more supervision, it might affect the desired collective goal. I realized recently that I should have trusted my students more and not interfered helpfully, but I was so full of my own need to interfere, that I didn't examine why I was sticking my neck out. My co-teacher in the situation was saying, "Oh just let them do what they want." So that was on my mind when I ran into the Zen guy. Indeed, trust is the ability to relax and not feel like you have to control outcomes. thx all who replied eightbitsamurai ButterflyEffect and mk. Also mk, a question as a birthday present is brilliant. In fact, didn't I write about that briefly here.
since you asked Should means that everything is in place to work out the way you personally set it up. It was your design, everyone is following through -- you should trust people to do what they said they would do. but you don't for various reasons, so you micromanage and try to influence the outcome. Maybe you don't even consciously know what those reasons are. You don't even realize that you're not trusting them. At least that's what happened to me.... sorry for being a little bit cryptic. new but related topic People often get mad at me for not listening to them. For example, person x (spousal unit) gives me directions to get to the highway after dropping him off. I question the directions. I want to go a different way. He gets personal: "Why don't you just listen to me?" This is a trust issue. I don't listen to him in this case because he is giving me directions for the way he would go, the way he likes to go, the way he's familiar with. I know that going that way, I'd run into a shitload of traffic and it would take me an extra 10 minutes. Going my way, I'd also run into traffic. It doesn't really matter. Driving sucks -- but I'd rather make my own mistakes (and make my own decisions). This makes him mad. Underlying it is his feeling of not being trusted. I'd like him to say, "It's not about me. I'm proud you're trying to figure out a good way for you to get to the highway. Thanks for giving me a lift out of your way." But instead I get, "Why don't you ever listen to me?" Next time he says that, I really have to say, "It's not about your ego or your need to be obeyed and listened to (trusted, respected, adult, the decider, whatever.) I just want to get to the highway in a way that I feel is efficient, even if it isn't. Why does that have to be an issue?" We're still in the pub, right? Am I venting?
Venting is good, it prevents unexpected explosions (Or should anyway). Words like 'should' give me grief. I recently(Few months recently) found out that very little of the time do I 'have to' do something. I want to do something really badly, maybe to advance a goal, but I don't have to do anything. Re: Trust I'm gonna have to re-visit this one sober. I just wrote and promptly deleted a long diatribe about trust, monkeywrenches and similar, but it's neither here nor there. I can say this with confidence. The word 'Trust' sucks because there are a lot of different kinds of relationships/responsibilities that are all amalgamated under that word.
A lot is in that word, conscious, subconscious, even drunk or unconscious. We trust in different ways, and you can specify how you trust people in each relationship. Pick up The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - it's a workplace training book -- but I can see its relevance in any team including romantic teams. Absence of trust is the first dysfunction.
Yes, please.If anyone's interested, I can write a little more about trust, here, later.
It was more the title than the song itself that made me post. That said, I own so much Future Sound Of London that it's categorized as a genre in my iTunes. They did "live shows" where they'd plug into a radio station from their studio via ISDN and then basically jam. According to iTunes I have two and a half days of live shows, one concert alone lasting nine hours. This track is from Environments Five, the last of five albums that sound pretty much just like this.