Student column: Trust is hard to gain, easy to lose

Trust is a very complicated thing. Merriam Webster gave the definition of trust as, “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.”

While that definition makes it seem like a typical, easy thing to come across, it’s really not. Trust is very easy to lose and very hard to gain back.

I once heard a simile about trust: trust is like paper; once it’s crumpled … it will never be perfect again. This can be reworded in many ways but they all achieve the same conclusion. Trust is important and you better try hard to keep your friends’ trust in you.

A friendship without trust is not a very healthy relationship. A friend is someone who you enjoy spending time with, someone you can tell things to and someone who is more or less like you. Teenagers tell their friends more than they tell anyone else; if you told your friend a secret would you want that secret getting around? That is totally against the definition of “secret.” It’s called a secret because you don’t want everyone knowing it. If your friend let your secret slip, you probably wouldn’t be telling that person any more secrets, right? That means your trust in that person is gone.

When you can trust someone, your life is fantastic. Being able to tell someone absolutely everything and knowing that they will just sit there and listen is a great feeling. Trusting someone means you can be yourself with them, not having to filter what you say or do.

But, sadly, you cannot trust every person you’ll ever meet. People are going to lie to you, and hurt you all throughout your life. A bit of advice to keep this from occurring often in your life is to make people earn your trust. Trust is a privilege, not a right. It’d be easier to trust everyone, but not everyone out there deserves it.

Sometimes people can earn your trust back; if they realize they made a mistake and try to make it up to you, don’t just ignore them. Let them attempt to earn your trust back. Sometimes they’ll succeed, sometimes they won’t. It’s up to you to determine if they’re worth taking back as a friend. If that crumpled piece of paper can become semi-smooth again.

It all depends on what they meant to you before the trust was wrecked, and how they wrecked it.

Remember, people aren’t perfect. They will make mistakes, but don’t make the mistake of trusting someone you shouldn’t. Your trust is something you shouldn’t just be throwing around, it’s a special thing.

What I’m trying to say here is, be careful who you trust; there are a lot of two-faced people out there.

Marissa Opp is a student at Farmington High School. Her column appears every other week.

Tags: commentaries, farmington, opinion