Unpacked: A Walker Returns Home

It’s not that we should trust people. It’s that we do.

I’ll explain.

While waiting for Saturday night’s concert to begin, the man sitting next to us placed his coat on his seat, and got up to buy a drink.

His wife passed her coat up from the aisle to us, through the hands of a dozen people and asked that we place it in her seat. The couple then went off to the bar, without any apparent worry that their seats or coats would be gone when they returned.

And it hit us: What a wild thing that this couple trusted a dozen strangers with their stuff!

We got to thinking: Functional society only works because we are trusting. I trust the weatherman, I trust the guy driving next to me, I trust the waitress that brings me coffee and I trust the little man carved into the door of the men’s room.

I trust Gmail that they send my email and I trust you when you tell me you received it. I trust the water company that my water is drinkable, I trust the OU that my food is Kosher, I trust my doctor when he tells me I am healthy.

Even if I think that everyone is simply looking out for their own good (including the guy on the men’s room door- I imagine that there are thousands of fake people lining up for his job), I am still trusting that humans value themselves, and are self-aware enough to be selfish.

We learned to appreciate trust while walking the PCT- the Pacific Crest Trail- this past summer, on the trail and off. We spent hours talking to strangers, slept in unlocked tents next to them, hitched rides from the highway and rode in the backs of pickups. And time after time, we concluded with confidence that people are wonderfully okay.

While in one stranger’s car, a hiker named Hermes told us of a research study on Dutch families during the Holocaust:

Dutch families that hid Jews during The Holocaust were likely not to have been taught “Don’t talk to strangers” in their youth. Families that did not hide Jews during the Holocaust were likely to have been taught “Don’t talk to strangers.”

Hermes continued by saying that we often take precautions against trusting, but should also take precautions against not trusting. In other words, not trusting has its own dire consequences. The Holocaust was clearly a collapse of human society, and I would argue that at the root stood a man who took advantage of a society that lost its trust in humanity. I am convinced that most injustices in the world are the result of mistrust.

But historical exceptions aside, I think that most of the time, we do pretty well. The melodic hum of a city is the sound of millions of people that trust each other. We might say “Don’t ride with strangers,” but do you know your public-bus driver?

Trust is in our bones. We begin with trust, and only protect it with skepticism. So if I can use you as a representative of society, I wish to say that I find it inspiring how much you and we trust each other.

I will spend my day today thinking about how many of my most ordinary actions depend on my trusting a stranger, or something made by a stranger. I invite you to do the same.

I am prone to a lack of confidence in the world or in my country. But when I quit reading the news and just look around, reality clearly proves me wrong. It is ironic that I base my impressions of the world on the news, when “newsworthy” events are by definition out of the ordinary.

I bless myself, that I will one day tell my children, “Be careful and aware. But always, always be trusting of strangers. They trust you.”

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Tags: PCT, The city, Trust

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 12:05 pm and is filed under The city. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.