This Year’s Word: Trust (1/3)

At the end of last year, the artist Christine Kane wrote in her blog about her ritual of choosing chooses a word to guide her throughout the year, instead of making New Year’s resolutions. She recommended to her readers that we might try this as well. I decided to choose the word Trust to guide me through this year.

The reason that I chose Trust as my word arose from a short conversation I had with a physiotherapist, not long after reading Christine’s blog post was published. The therapist was treating me for tension in my neck and shoulders. She uses a form of massage called Craniosacral, which has helped relieve the tension in the past. It not only works on specific areas of the body, but also on metaphysical organisms. At the end of one session, she tells me she thinks I have difficulties with my kidneys.

According to her, kidneys are sources of energy. They should radiate energy like a warm oven. Mine were hearths of cold ashes. She goes on to explain that in Chinese medicine, each organ is associated with an attribute. Kidneys, apparently, denote trust; did I, she asked, have any problems with trust?

Upon returning home, I made myself a hot cup of tea and asked myself this very question. Surprisingly, I started to cry when I posed the question. And, it became very clear that somewhere along the line, over the last decade, I had lost my ability to trust certain people near-and-dear to me, and, more importantly, I had lost trust in myself, in my ability to overcome existential challenges. It was equally evident, that I had to rediscover this ability.

Yitzhak Rabin said,

“If you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it’s not a problem; maybe it’s a fact.”

It was evident that it was time to go off on a fact-finding mission. One whose goal was to find out what Trust actually is, from both a theoretical, as well as, a practical point-of-view. I gave myself this year to study the scholars, to converse with friends, and to participate in solitary contemplation about the meaning of trust, and its importance in life.

There has been much I’ve studied and much I’ve been told. It has been a full year in this concern. Yet, I don’t wish to list the information, but rather I wish to write in the next two posts about two aspects of trust that I have learnt through experience, as well as study.

To be continued...