The Essence of Life Is Built on One Word
Photo by Liane Metzler on Unsplash
Due to COVID-19 lockdowns in the spring, Pennsylvania changed its primary date to June 2, 2020. With a bit of fear and uncertainty about how to stay safe and healthy from COVID, I chose to register to vote in our primary via mail-in ballot, which I did with no problem.
As the summer unfolded, I became more knowledgeable and comfortable that wearing a mask provided me a high degree of protection from COVID. As a result, I became comfortable with voting in person and wanted to do it to ensure my vote was counted. You see, I trusted in the vote-in-person model. I went online and tried to change my preference from voting by mail to voting in person. I was unable to make the change.
In early October, I received my mail-in ballot. I started investigating what I had to do to vote in person. I learned that I could bring my unopened ballot to my polling place and surrender it for a provisional ballot. I decided I wasn’t going to do that, as my whole purpose of going to vote in person was to ensure that my vote was counted early and properly. Provisional ballots are the last ballots to be counted.
As I’m sure you remember, in the summer, it was revealed that the United States Postal Service (USPS) leadership was taking action including reducing staffing that had the potential to slow down the delivery of mail and ballots. The USPS even publicly stated something to the effect that people mailing in ballots should do so early as they were not confident they could deliver all the ballots in a timely fashion due to the large volume of mail-in ballots. This uncertainty created for me a lack of trust in the USPS to deliver my mail-in ballot.
To combat this situation, here in our county, drop boxes were installed so that people like me could drop our ballots off which would then be directly delivered to the county election bureau to be counted, bypassing the USPS. On October 21, Carol and I dropped our ballots into the drop box in front of our township building. Unfortunately, our ballots were never recorded as being received. Carol spoke to one of our township commissioners who then spoke with folks in the county election bureau who knew of the problem and assured us that our ballots were received and would be counted. We were not assured.
We kept checking online to see if our ballots were received up to 1 pm election day. They weren’t. So, Carol and I voted using a provisional ballot. We have receipts for our provisional ballot, but can’t check on the status of our provisional ballot until, “at least seven days after Election Day.”
As of now, Carol and I don’t feel good about what’s transpired and even worse, have no confidence that our vote was counted and our voices heard.
My take away from this experience is the unquestionable and irrefutable importance of trust in our lives. Without trust, we are no different than animals.
Trust begins with our trust in human beings. It starts when we are born. As a baby, we unconsciously trust that those around us will take care of us. As we get a little older, we understand and place our trust in our parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and other caregivers to ensure our safety and well-being. Then we go to school and unconsciously trust that our teachers will treat us well and guide us. Then as our world expands, we place our trust in coaches and or other teachers like dance, music, and the like who cultivate our expanded interests.
My hope is that you—like me—lived a life where the people entrusted with our well-being, appropriately honored that trust. For me, I had a big hiccup with trust in 1st grade. I had a first-grade teacher that was a yeller. She yelled at the class. I told my mother, whom I trusted and she went to the principal, which ultimately resulted in having that teacher removed. Unfortunately for me and I imagine others in that class, it altered my relationship with trust in adults.
Then we move to middle school, where kids can be quite cruel to one another. This is where trust, or rather not trusting, really gets amplified for us as human beings. In high school, we started to build stronger relationships and some of us dated. Some cheated on their “boyfriends or girlfriends” which erodes our trust in others, especially in romantic relationships. And the cycle continues throughout life, but our formative years have a big impact on our ability to trust.
As a behavioral analyst, I can tell you that some of us easily give our trust to others. I am one of those persons. However, we will seize that trust, if someone breaches it. Then it will be quite difficult for that person to earn back our trust. You may have heard someone say, “I can’t trust you anymore.” This is the language of someone who has trusted and the trust was violated. Then there are some among us who inherently are skeptical of others and will only give their trust after it’s earned over a period of time. Of course, there is a full continuum of trust from Trusting to Not Trusting and people fall in various places along that continuum.
So what is Trust? Trust is defined as good relationships built on confidence, belief, faith, certainty, assurance, conviction, credence, reliance. I would modify this slightly as there are three areas in which we trust, 1) people/relationships, 2) things and 3) systems. So you can add to the word relationships in the definition of trust above to include things and systems. Then it would read:
Trust is - good (relationships, things and systems) which are built on confidence, belief, faith, certainty, assurance, conviction, credence, reliance.
Foundational to all trust is people and relationships. Marriages falter, children suffer when trust of another is breached, which is to say, we don’t honor our word to another. In business, we say people join companies and leave their bosses. That is an articulation of a lack of trust in their leader.
Then there is trust in things. Two simple and easily understood examples are when you get in a car you inherently trust that the car will work, especially the brakes, to stop you. If they don’t, look out. I’ve traveled for business a fair amount throughout my life. Every time I get on a plane, I trust that the plane’s mechanical parts will work and the plane will stay in the sky. I’m also trusting the pilot to come to work rested and in a good frame of mind to do their job and to be the best version of themselves as a pilot to get me to where I’m going, safely.
The last area is systems. My voting example above is a demonstration of a lack of trust in systems. First, my trust in USPS eroded over the summer. Then when I couldn’t confirm my mail-in ballot was received, I lost trust in the process. Now, Carol and I have no belief or trust that our vote and voices were heard. That stinks.
Simply said, trust is honoring our word, implied or otherwise. When I trust the brakes in my car or the engine on the plane, I’m operating with an implied trust of everything that went into the building and assembling of those mechanical things. Up until this year, I always trusted that my vote was counted—not this year.
The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, in March 1989. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill began on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform where this occurred was run by BP. From about April 1989 to this day, I have never knowingly bought Exxon gas, while I won’t hesitate to buy BP gas. Why? Trust. You see, Exxon tried to cut corners and avoid the responsibility of cleaning up the oil spill from the Valdez. Conversely, BP seemingly took complete responsibility for and put forth great efforts to clean up the disaster that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill created.
Without trust we have nothing.
You see, it is not what happens in life that matters but rather how we respond to it. I believe BP honored their word by being and acting responsibly towards the oil spill; Exxon did not.
Do you want to transform your life, your relationships, and your business? The place to look is your word. If you are honoring your word to others, you are building Trust. If you are not, you are eroding trust. As you sow, so shall you reap.
P.S. 90 minutes after completing writing this blog, Carol notified me that our ballots had been received and recorded. While some of my trust in the voting system has been restored, I still have an integrity issue with the process as they updated the online system with my vote being recorded on November 5th but claimed it was received on October 22nd. Go figure.
