Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
-William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)
I just got the above quote as part of today's issue of Anu Garg's A Word A Day newsletter and, after basking in the warm glow of its sentiment combined with the definition of today's word: bucolic, the word trust burned through the sweetness of Shakespeare's intent with personal experiences leading to my sadder but wiser realization that trusting anyone, especially that "few" loved ones Bill mentions, is an essential wrong we do each other every day. It may be the crux of the essential difference between eastern and western cultures.
Trusting anything is betting on our own judgement; jaywalking in heavy traffic. Projecting our wishful thinking upon the world, whether through rose colored glasses or surveillance cameras, obligates nothing of the world to satisfy us. The core lesson in the golden rule is bridging separate skins and cultural differences to realize it is not enough just to treat others as we would be treated, but to care enough to understand what it is to treat them as they would be treated.
We all serve as sensory input for an invisible observer, an entity of which we are a part, just as our cells inform who and wherever it is we imagine we are. The street name for this silent observer is "the world", being that of which we are conscious — which informs the image the world has of itself in what can truly be called another dimension, at least in scale — its "world".
Love asks nothing; it arises in recognition of happy happenstance. Trust asks everything but permission; a terrible way to treat one who evokes love within us. It's no treat knowing that you can disappoint someone who's love comes with required behavior. The trust avowed is a roadside bomb guiding newlyweds down each other's straight and narrow … or else; the best way yet invented to suffer from a blessing from which no one gains but indifferent lawyers.
It has been said that man rides a camel in search of a camel in the land where men ride camels. Man never realizes he is a wellspring of his own happiness and love in the land where men search elsewhere for love — yet dismiss it for failing the qualified requital.
Just as life would have less meaning if we were deathless, love would be less drenched in drama if trust weren't wagered against it as a claim. If the love is lost, it was only love from others the loveless self sought. If it was actually love to begin with, only the bet is lost, never the love.
The realization of the being, whose consciousness is greater than the sum of the parts we earthlings are, is the evolutionary leap that will cure the cancer the exploitive intent of western civilization's military-industrial complex has become on the body of the planet.
"Just as life would have less meaning if we were deathless, love would be less drenched in drama if trust weren't wagered against it as a claim." This statement stood out to me the most. To love unconditionally is a rare thing. I've often wondered how one could state the words "I used to love him/her until I couldn't trust . . ." To me this is almost an oxymoron.
ReplyDeleteYou then wrote, "Trust asks everything but permission; a terrible way to treat one who evokes love within us. It's no treat knowing that you can disappoint someone who's love comes with required behavior." How true this reigns.