Gaza, 1995. Walking to the edge of the street, I raise a hand like I’m hailing a cab. This isn’t New York though, and there are no taxis here. Still, a dusty sedan eventually pulls out of traffic. Through the open window, I say two words in Arabic to the stranger behind the wheel.
“Beach Camp?”
He nods and I climb into the passenger seat. He puts the car in gear and we navigate 10 minutes of chaotic traffic in silence. At my destination, I fish a Shekel out of my pocket – the standard fare for anywhere in the city – and hand him the coin. “Shukran,” I say and get out. He nods and drives off.
I’ll admit, getting in a car with a random stranger in a foreign country took some getting used to for me. Fast forward to today. Every single second, 162 people climb into a stranger’s car thanks to Uber.
How we trust can evolve.
I think about this when I encounter people lamenting how we are trusting less today. They cite any number of polls that show trust in government, news media, neighbors, etc. has been steadily declining for decades. They paint a bleak picture.
However, while opinion polls show waning trust in large general categories, human behavior tells a different story. People continue to trust complete strangers everyday.
They eat at restaurants, consult product reviews, send retailers money online without receiving anything back for days, book Airbnbs, board planes, and check the box without reading the terms and conditions.
To trust is human. In many ways, it’s our default. We begin completely dependent on others for survival. We mature within the structure of our families, communities, and societies. As adults, we focus on higher order thinking only to the extent we can trust a myriad of everyday needs to other people.
No, People are not trusting less, they are just trusting differently.
How we trust changes, but we remain, at our core, creatures of trust. We may at times trust poorly, but we all rely on some measure of trust to thrive in our everyday lives.
For Reflection: In what ways are people already trusting you? How can you honor and appreciate that trust?
Update: 58,450 words
I’ve written 58,450 manuscript words out of a goal of 60,000. That puts me about 97% complete with the first draft, which is 2% more than last week.
So close! I had some unexpected travel pop up this week that punched a hole in my writing routines, so I still have a little more than 1500 words until I hit my goal!
