You live based on trust…
- when you hit the snooze button. Because the alarm could lose power and never wake you back up.
- when you show up on time for an office meeting. Because everyone else could bail on you.
- when you take a physics class in college. Because the “experts” could be in on an elaborate conspiracy.
- when you drive past an oncoming car on a narrow highway. Because a slight swerve from the other driver, and you’re both dead.
- when you show up at an airport to fly to Australia. Because the pilots could have simultaneous heart attacks over the ocean, or they could fly you to New Guinea and tell you it’s Australia.
- when you breathe a breath of air. Because it could be toxic.
Everything you and I know or think we know, everything you and I do, is based on trust. You can deny it all you want, act all skeptical. But even that requires trust, trust that being skeptical is the best approach at the moment.
There’s not a whole lot of certainty in life. I want to say there’s none at all, but I’m not even certain about that.
Without any certainty, it seems like confidence would be shot. But that’s not how it works. We have to act like things are certain because acting otherwise would be acting as though something else were certain. Like if we act as though the sun won’t come up tomorrow, that’s another form of trust, namely, that the sun won’t come up tomorrow.
It’s a trap. We don’t get to decide if we want to trust. We just get to decide what to trust.
