THE MEANING OF TRUST
What is trust? While I can find its definition in the dictionary – to place confidence in someone or something – I can’t find the feeling of trust in its pages, nor can I find it in the mouth of my father. To trust, to truly trust, is to put your faith in the hands of someone else. To trust is an intimate and honest exchange: I trust you and you trust me. As cultural theorist bell hooks once said, “Without trust, there can be no genuine intimacy and love.” A true and honest friendship is the most beautiful example of trust. It’s a space without judgement, without fear, a space where you can laugh until you cry and cry until you laugh. Feelings can go unsaid, words can disappear into silence, and yet you trust that your person just knows. That’s trust.
MOUTH OF TRUTH
Located in the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome, the Mouth of Truth (“Bocca della Verità” in Italian) is a huge Pavonazzo marble mask-like male face with a wide-open mouth, nostrils and eyes. Despite being one of the most well-known sculptures in Italy and beyond, very little is known about its story – including its age. One of the most believed myths surrounding the sculpture, originating in the Middle Ages, is that liars who placed their hand inside the sculpture would immediately lose it. Hence the name, the Mouth of Truth. Supposedly, medieval Romans saw the sculpture as a lie detector for those who committed acts like adultery and perjury. A husband who mistrusted his wife took her to the Mouth of Truth to test her faithfulness. In an attempt to evade the powers of the Mouth of Truth, the woman reacted by pretending to swoon, and her secret lover, concealing himself as a madman, caught her in his arms. After this, the woman swore before the Mouth of Truth that she had only been in the arms of her husband and of the man that had just caught her.
BOB ROSS: THE ART OF LIVING
“Of all the arts, the art of living is the most important,” declared Deborah Levy in her autobiographical novel Real Estate. Perhaps one of the most famous people to understand this – both creatively and personally – was Bob Ross, the American painter and host of the show The Joy of Painting. Between tips on how to become a seasoned artist, Ross shared, with his kind and gentle voice, meaningful life advice as he related his painting to his experiences. In his intuitive approaach to painting, happy trees, calm streams and green hilltops are formed from singular criss-cross strokes that appear to be nothing more than smudges of colour. As more strokes are added, the blotches of colour transform into intricate paintings.
Beginning with a blank canvas can be intimidating. But, as Ross assured his audience, it’s about trusting the process. Trusting that something beautiful can emerge from destruction, that destruction can be a springboard for something new to emerge. An optimistic and philosophical view of art as a means to understand the world around us: to understand the art of trusting the process, the art of being, the art of living – in all of its beauty, ugliness, pain, joy, suffering and pleasure.
Trust, by definition, is our unconditional belief that we can rely on someone.
Trust is an often cited and seemingly important value that is usually expected of other individuals or groups. Trust is also confidence in a relatively defined degree of reliability and competence. Trust is seen as an advance of hope with regard to certain expectations.
In its extent and form, this advance of trust is influenced by positive or negative experiences that we have had. In leadership, the opposite value is ‘control’. Ideally, both maintain a balance between the two.
The common belief that you have to make a trade-off between these two values (‘trust is good, control is better’) is not particularly beneficial.
A constructive mindset assumes that trust eliminates control and, conversely, control eliminates trust.
Vertrauen ist per definitionem unser vorbehaltloser Glaube, dass man sich auf jemanden verlassen kann, und Vertrauen ist ein oft genannter und anscheinend wichtiger Wert, der zumeist von anderen Personen oder Gruppen erwartet wird. Weiterhin ist Vertrauen das Zutrauen in eine relativ bestimmte Zuverlässigkeit und Fähigkeit. Vertrauen gilt als hoffnungsvoller Vorschuss hinsichtlich bestimmter Erwartungen. Dieser Vertrauensvorschuss wird in seiner Dimension und Form von positiven oder negativen Erfahrungen, die man gemacht hat, beeinflusst. In der Führung von Menschen gilt als gegensätzlicher Wert „Kontrolle“. Im Idealfall halten sich beide expandierend die Waage. Die weitläufige Meinung, dass man zwischen diesen beiden Werten abwägen müsse („Vertrauen ist gut, Kontrolle ist besser“), ist wenig zielführend. Mit einer konstruktiven Geisteshaltung gilt die Annahme: Vertrauen löst Kontrolle aus und umgekehrt löst Kontrolle Vertrauen aus. Wortformen von Vertrauen sind: vertrauensvoll, vertraulich, vertraut Synonyme für Vertrauen sind: Zutrauen, positive Erwartung, Zuversicht, Zukunftserwartung, Glaube, Hoffnung, Gewissheit.