Trust, Is It Too Late?

One of the most influential people in my life was my grandfather, Pop. I won’t go into all of Pop’s history, but he was a big man, he served as a rancher-farmer, and then eventually served in law enforcement.

However, his work history is not what influenced me. What did influence me about Pop were our conversations. Sometimes those conversations occurred on the way to the farm, working in the yard, having breakfast, playing dominos, or the chitchat that occurred around the holidays while sitting around. From those conversations, I learned how important being trustworthy was. I know from my standpoint, everyone could depend on Pop: his friends, his coworkers, his family. He was trustworthy. When Pop said something, you believed it. And if he didn’t know, he said so.

But, it was a two-way street. Pop demanded that his friends be trustworthy. He demanded that people that he worked with be honest. He could forgive mistakes, but he struggled forgiving a lack of honesty. He struggled with anyone that he could not trust to carry out their word.

He engrained that in me. I have friends of different persuasions, politically, and I have different friends with different religious beliefs, but the one thing that is most important to me is that they are trustworthy. And it is important to me that I keep my word.

Sometimes I am terribly disappointed. Long ago, I was an avid bike rider and bicycle racer. One of my idols was Lance Armstrong. When he was accused of cheating, I defended him. It was heartbreaking when I discovered, in fact, he was lying. I was disillusioned.

I think some of the clients that I struggle with helping are those clients that have really lost faith in honesty and trustworthiness. Many times, there was a family situation where someone was not honest; or a family member that could no longer be trusted. I think those are the most painful, particularly when the dishonest person is a child or close relative.

A lot of our time working together with those clients is trying to build up a relationship that they can trust.

It is certainly easy to get jaded at the trustworthiness of people in the world. We’re suspicious of our politicians, our news, and even our “friends” who post on social media. It is to the point that some don’t trust any type of information and choose, instead, to believe something that fits their own needs versus what is really going on.

Let me make a suggestion to you. We cannot make everyone trustworthy. But, we can be trustworthy ourselves. One of the benefits of my practice and working with older clients is that many of them are trustworthy. They are trusted by their family; they are trusted by their friends; and we can trust everything they tell us. I get so concerned that when they pass away that trustworthiness standard; will pass away along with them.

So, it starts with you and I. If our family, our friends, and those that we work with can trust us, maybe it will inspire them to be trustworthy as well. It is not too late.