Senior Moments
By Charles P. Eberson
One word has been in my mind lately, like a song that you can’t get out of your head. That word is “trust.” My “low trust” light has been glowing a lot recently and I’ve had to pause for some introspection as to how this came about because I have come to believe that overall, trust has a “freshness date” built into it. For me, it is beginning to spoil.
According to an article in Psychology Today, “The Neuroscience of Trust, “Recent neuroscientific research shows that in many ways our brains are hardwired to trust others.” In the early years, I did; parents, friends, teachers, coaches, everybody I came in contact with. I had no reason to. But the article goes on to say, “…this aspect of our human nature is one reason that having your trust betrayed can short circuit your neurobiology and make it difficult to trust again. Some circumstances involving trust can make you vulnerable and past negative experiences will resurface.”
I experienced this firsthand at a company where I was employed for many years. Trusts were betrayed for power, advancements, favors, or simply social standing. My coworkers and I would joke about the ever-shrinking “circle of trust.” Trust issues continued with family and extended family however, life experiences along with applying certain modifications ameliorated some of its effects.
I must say that even though I consider myself to be of relatively high moral character, I also have been guilty of betraying trusts. Some of them still nag at me but I feel that the decisions I made at the time were perhaps, selfish but made with the best information I had.
Before being critical of others, I do a self-assessment to reacquaint myself with my strengths and weaknesses. My wife is always a little too eager to help in this exercise.
I also think my struggles with trust have been exacerbated by what has been happening in our world over the past couple of years. Even in my advanced years, I cannot remember such distrust in our government, the various agencies, and corporations that we have put our trust in for so many years. There is such conflicting information about vaccines, masks, climate change, immigration, and racism just to name a few, and somewhere in the chaos, lies the truth. I just don’t know where.
Do you want to fly on an airline? Just fill out a questionnaire about your health status. Can you trust everyone to be truthful in their answers when travel plans may be in jeopardy? You had better not. A recent study by the Pew Research Center stated that Americans are anxious about the level of confidence they have in each other. It states, “fully 71% think interpersonal confidence has worsened in the past 20 years. And about half (49%) think a major weight dragging down such trust is that Americans are not as reliable as they used to be.” Thankfully, as a retiree and being out of the mainstream workforce for some years, I am not put in a position to trust the entities one must interact with throughout performing one’s duties. But I do not live in isolation either. My best defense is to acknowledge that I will be faced with these interpersonal challenges and do my best to prepare for them. As President Ronald Reagan so famously said, “Trust but verify.” Trust me, I will.
