Lesson 89: Trust

Today while playing with my 3-year old niece, I learned an important lesson in trust.

As an adult, I've never been one to trust people easily. I'm skeptical of people's intentions, and I find it hard to let go of suspicions and just believe them and what they're saying. Granted, this is probably due to the fact that I've had more life experiences and therefore more reasons not to trust people than a 3-year old would, but I was just amazed by how much this little one trusted me. We were playing a game that she appropriately called "fallin'" (she doesn't pronounce "-ing" so well) where she would just fall backwards and I would catch her. She eventually changed the rhythm of the game when she started to fall forward, and I never saw an ounce of fear in her eyes because she believed that much that I would catch her. She would instead just lean backwards (or forward) and laugh as I pretended to drop her but caught her at the last minute.

I'm wondering what it would take to be able to trust like that again. Even in my illogical mind, I can't reconcile trusting everyone all the time, but I would like to know how to trust the people who care about me. Maybe this fallin' business makes more sense than I realize. Maybe you just have to be willing to let go and believe that someone who cares enough will catch you.