This is an excerpt from my memoir, A Past That Lies Before Me. In it, I make a rather controversial claim that goes against conventional wisdom: I say that trust is something that is given and not earned. Popular opinion claims the opposite. Read and tell me what you think.
"After all, contrary to popular belief, I believe that trust is something that is given, not usually earned. We au- tomatically trust the restaurant cook we never met to prepare our food safely. We automatically trust an unknown Uber driver when we get in his or her car. And when we enter into a rela- tionship with someone, though we do not fully know them, we give them our deepest trust soon after meeting. We do so based on a feeling, not on something earned. Therefore, contrary to common thinking, I believe that it is trust that we normally give people, and that it really is distrust that is earned from bad expe- riences."
"After all, contrary to popular belief, I believe
that trust is something that is given, not usually earned. We au-
tomatically trust the restaurant cook we never met to prepare
our food safely. We automatically trust an unknown Uber driver
when we get in his or her car. And when we enter into a rela-
tionship with someone, though we do not fully know them, we
give them our deepest trust soon after meeting. We do so based
on a feeling, not on something earned. Therefore, contrary to
common thinking, I believe that it is trust that we normally give
people, and that it really is distrust that is earned from bad expe-
riences."