Trust Uplifts the Soul

 The title of this blogpost is a quotation by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century Genevan philosopher and writer. "Trust uplifts the soul."

And yes, of course it does, but my goodness! It can be hard to trust at times. I have written before about trust and betrayal here. And I wrote, once we feel betrayed, "it can take a lot of time to build up sufficient faith to make the world seem trustable again."

I am naturally a fairly trusting person, but a couple of weeks ago, this trust was betrayed, which resulted in a good friend of mine being defrauded of a lot of money. The banks are now dealing with it and they are going to get their money back, but it has left a nasty taste in my mouth. Was I stupidly naive? Yes, probably. Has my faith in the essential goodness of humankind been shaken? Yes, a little.

But I know that if I am to live in faith, I need to try to trust again. Otherwise, my soul will shrivel in my body and I will turn into a suspicious, armoured-up person who trusts no-one.  I would not be "me" any more. 

And so I am going to take a deep breath and try to put this incident behind me. I have well and truly learned my lesson and will be far more cautious about anything involving money in future. But I will try not to let this unpleasant incident warp my life.