By increasing our capacity to expect the best of others - to offer them our trust - we can enrich our own lives immeasurably The Courage to Trust Condensed from CHRISTIAN HERALD .. EVERAL years ago I chanced to be seated ona plane next to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On his other side was a mid- dle-aged Southerner, a white man. We talked, Dr. King and I, of many things, including the new understanding which seemed then to be drawing white and Negro together. At last the Southerner broke in. “I am learning to accept these things,” he said. “My children will have no problem at all. But my father-he will never change.” Dr. King looked for a long minute at the troubled man who ARDIS WHITMAN realized that his father was in the wrong but who could not change him. Then Dr. King said gently, “Your father is doing what he believes to be right.” Obviously moved, the man said, “Thank you for that.” One of the most wonderful things about Dr. King was this capacity. to trust that, even in his enemies, there was a desire to do what was right. The dictionary defines trust as “confident hope.” Trust is the willingness to gamble on the basic fact of good intentions. All fine human relationships depend on trust. The teacher's battle is CHRISTIAN HERALO (DECEMBER 68).(€)1968 BY CHRISTIAN HERALD ASSN.. ING. 17 27 €. 39 ST. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016READER'S DIGEST almost won the day she is able to persuade the delinquent child to believe that she intends him no harm; psychiatrists spend a ma- jor part of their time trying to induce their distracted patients to trust them so healing can pro- ceed. “One must be fond of peo- ple and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life,” wrote the novelist E. M. Forster. When I was eight I went to the circus in Boston and mar- veled at the trapeze artists, soar- ing impossibly through space, always catching the flying swing from each other. “‘Aren’t they scared?” I said to my mother. A man in the row ahead turned to answer. ‘They aren't scared,” he said gently. “They trust each other.” “He used to be on the high wires,” someone whispered. Whenever I think of trusting people, I remember those flying figures, a hairbreadth from death, each making a place of safety for the other. I am re- minded that, for all their cour- age and training, their breath- taking performance could not have been carried out without the essential ingredient of trust. So it is in ordinary life. An at- mosphere of trust is as necessary as air or water to human life. We cannot be ourselves unless we can trust the people around _us; how imprisoned we are be- hind our masks when we dare 18 not disclose ourselves to others! And to be on guard all the time paralyzes our psychic energy. Moreover, it takes trust to love and be loved. “Love is an act of faith,” wrote Erich Fromm, “and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.” On the other hand, in the pres- ence of those who’ believe in us, we feel safe and free. The psy- chologist Bonaro Overstreet put it this way: “We are not only our brother’s keeper; in count- less large and small ways we are our brother’s maker.” By our trust or distrust we shape him. Kathryn Lawes, wife of the former warden of Sing Sing Prison in New York State, used to go into the prison yard almost every day with her children. When people protested, she re- plied, “They are our friends.” Her trust in them was remark- ably commemorated. When she died suddenly, word spread quickly through the prison and the men gathered as close to the gate as possible. The principal Keeper looked at the silent men, then flung open the gates. All day long the men filed to the house where her body lay. There were no walls around them, yet not one prisoner broke the trust that had been placed in them. Why do human beings find it so difficult to trust each other? The main reason is that we are afraid. Watch a pair of stiff peo-GETTING MORE OUT OF LIFE ple sitting side by side ona plane ora train, each fearing to speak. “We are afraid,” wrote Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman, “‘of being disparaged, rejected, unmasked.” How different the small en- counters of everyday life for someone who trusts the world! Once I heard a man describe a woman he had known. “She came to meet everyone,” he said, “with both hands out. You felt as if she were saying, ‘How I trust you! I feel so fine just being with you!’” The man added, “You went away feeling as if you could do anything you tried.” Leftover memories of child- hood often make us defensive. A business executive I know, for example, has few friends. His mother died when he was seven, and the well-meaning aunt who took him home with her told him that his mother had “‘gone away ona visit.” He waited vainly for weeks for his mother to return. As a result of this well-inten- tioned betrayal, he grew up un- able to trust anyone again. To increase our capacity to trust one another, we first need faith in ourselves. ‘‘There’s nothing I’m afraid of like scared people,” wrote Robert Frost. And, im fact, he who feels in- ferior and inadequate cannot trust others. But to believe in our own worth does not mean to see nothing wrong with our- selves. What we must trust about ourselves is simply what we must trust about others— that we, too, are trying io do what is right, however faultily! Second, trust requires real- ism. ‘It’s risky to trust people,” an acquaintance of mine said bitterly. “You can be fooled.” She was right, if to trust people means betting that they will never do anything wrong. Trust cannot be founded on illusion. For the insensitive will not over- night become sensitive; the gos- sip will not necessarily keep your secret. The world is not an inno- cent playground on which every- one wishes us well, and we must face this fact. No, real trust is not naiveté. It is, rather, unwavering accep- tance of the other person as he is, and a sensitive reaching out for the best in him. Finally, trust requires a gam- ble—-a gamble of love, time, mon- ey, sometimes even our lives, on someone else. Trust will not al- ways win. But Count Camillo di Cavour, the great Italian states- man, has said, ‘“‘The man who trusts other men will make few- er mistakes than he who dis- trusts them.” No great human achievement has ever been “accomplished without trust. “Trust men and they will be true to you,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.” 19