Trust

17 Mar 2010

We learn to trust many things. Gravity. Fridges. Accountants. Footbridges. Apples. It would be a shock if any of these things let you down, some of those shocks more serious than others.

Of course, it would be dreadful if we took this trust to its logical conclusion and started trusting people. That's not what they are for. Or should I say that we do trust people – to be untrustworthy. As we all know, all politicians are greedy liars, journalists are pernicious fibbers, your male friends and relatives will molest your kittens, your female friends will steal your husband (or possibly your goat), the Ocado delivery man is really just casing your joint (normally the left knee) while the local mugger is really trying to give stuff away so that he doesn't have to hold a car boot sale. No one can be relied on! It's a shocker.

I had a relief today. I passed the first bit of by hideous PRINCE2 course, which means I don't get slung out on my ear and barred from attending the rest of the course. I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing, but I probably shouldn't be looking towards abject failure as sensible a way of pressure management. But anyway, this means that when the trainer looked at us all and said very reassuringly that if we paid attention and did the homework we'd pass, he was trustworthy.

Or was he? Just because he was right doesn't necessarily suggest this. Maybe he was gambling. Otherwise how could he know? Did he fix the papers? Was he sent by the mafia? What's in it for him anyway? He gets paid whether we pass or not. He's clearly up to something. I will have to watch him for the next couple of days. Obviously I was going to have to do that anyway, since he's still training me. Consider it a metaphorical watching coupled with a real watching to create a special existential Watching+ like something advertised by a cable TV company.

Now I've been let down by something I did trust – the Myspace blog page. I can't write this in. Obviously I have subsequently beaten the system, or you would not be reading this, but currently it won't show me a cursor. This doesn't happen with shoes. You don't slip your shoes on, kneel down and find that your laces have vanished. At least very rarely.

Shoes you can trust. Like apples. Just keep away from the people.