"The check is in the mail" and "Trust me".
Ah, you say. A little black humour about our primordial paranoia. The trouble is, it's got truth written all over it.
We have learned not to trust -- and with plenty of reason. Still, trust is a fundamental element without which we can hardly move from today to tomorrow, from here to there. So somehow, no matter how bleak our experience, we've got to learn how to have faith.
Because without it, we're dead meat.
There's an interesting little exercise offered in some self-help seminars which is designed to measure our ability to trust. It's a simple test. First, you stand in front of another member of the group. Next you are told to close your eyes and fall backwards, letting the person behind you catch you as you fall. That's it.
You think it's easy? Try it.
For me, it was a major eye-opener. What shocked me most was discovering how difficult it is to do. You know there's a person behind you, common sense tells you they will catch you, and yet, and yet... It is still unbelievably hard to let yourself go. What you feel is akin to the reluctance beginning skydivers experience before they plunge from the plane. What happens if something goes wrong -- and you plummet to the ground?
In most cases, this reluctance arises from early fears of abandonment. All of us have some of these fears tucked away in our memory bank; and now, doing the falling back exercise, we find that as we attempt to tilt backwards, every cell in our body rushes forth to cry HALT! to the whole experiment.
When the group I was in did this exercise, most of us proceeded awkwardly, a sign that we were trying both to fall back and not fall back at the same moment. We were attempting to take a risk without risking anything. Not a successful dance, by any means.
Those who could go limp and lean into nothingness were the winners.
And they really were the winners. Because even though everyday life doesn't typically ask us to take a backward fall, it does require us to take risks. And those who can take a risk with the confidence that life will cover them and keep them safe -even if they fall down- are able to play in the world on a much wider scale. And get a lot more fun out of the journey. Those of us who are more hesitant, who fumble around furtively with our risk-taking, often end up making a mess -- simply because the presence of fear interrupts any natural flow or movement.
So it's something worth taking a look at, worth working on -- our capacity to trust.
A first step is to start noticing how much and how often we don't trust. And further, to notice how we've made not trusting a savvy point of view. At first hearing, that sounds like an intelligent plan. But look at it closer.
Being trusting does not mean being a dummy. Trust has nothing to do with being oblivious to everyday dangers; it has to do with sensing there is a central force within us that will guide us in where and how to step over the open potholes. We can keep our eyes open, see the worst there is to see, and still keep faith in an inner guidance system. In fact, it's the only method that really works.
For example, I remember a time when I interviewed for a job I really, really wanted and got turned down. I went through a period of cynicism after that -- "there's no point to going after something you want, after all." and felt quite dark about this world. Three months later, the company called and said they had made a mistake in not hiring me, and wanted me to start work immediately. It was a great job.
Well, so what? you're saying -- you got the job, what difference does it make how dark you were in the interim? The difference is that for me it was a terribly bleak time, and it didn't have to be. I could have said, "Well, that didn't work, but something will." And if I had trusted that, the quality and energy of the months inbetween would have been quite different: buoyant instead of dark, flowing instead of stuck, light instead of heavy. Instead, it was three months wasted. And I miss those three months. I wish I had driven through them on faith instead of cynicism.
Learning to trust means knowing the true nature of life is beneficent, and being willing to rest on that. It's a realization worth going after.
Trust me.
Send comments to Elsa Joy Bailey