I have been carrying this question for a few days.
Not because I want people to trust me.
Because I want to understand why we trust anyone at all.
A strange pattern keeps appearing.
The people I trust most have never asked me to trust them.
They simply kept doing work that quietly improved my life.
A sentence.
An idea.
A conversation.
A way of looking at the world.
Nothing dramatic.
Just enough to leave me a little better than before.
Then I looked at my own life.
A few people have trusted me with questions that mattered to them.
I kept wondering why.
Was it because we had met?
Or was it because, in some small way, our conversations had already made their lives a little easier to live?
I don’t know.
But I think I’m beginning to ask a better question.
Instead of asking,
“How do I earn someone’s trust?”
Perhaps I should ask,
“What can I give today that genuinely improves another person’s life?”
I’m still thinking about it.
Photo: Mahi Singh · © ansi & you™