Trust: A Bridge To The Heart

I was reading Sze Yin's blog the other day where she tried to describe the meaning of 'Trust'. I think she explain it rather well and accurate too. It was a Mandarin post, so I shall put it in English here in my blog with my own understandings too.

When two strangers meet, they know nothing of each other, whether it is their name, age, background, mentality, personality, etc. Nonetheless, people may still try to make an approach to get some information about each other.

This can be describe as two person on different sides of the river. They each take a small boat and travel across the river to greet each other. At first, since everyone knows nothing of each other, for security purposes, they may not allow the other person to step onto their piece of land (territory), so they might just stop in the middle of the river to exchange some greetings just to know a little about each other; or a person from one side may row the boat across to the other side to talk to the other land owner without stepping on the land, just sitting in his boat in the river. Later, when they are more familiar with each other. Then maybe one would take the boat across the river then seek permission to step onto the land of the other owner for further conversations.

But as time goes by and everyone is comfortable with each other, and they would like to forge a relationship, i.e. friendship, etc, they will need to have an easier access towards each others' piece of land. It would be rather troublesome if you always need to row a boat, fighting the currents to get across the river to the other side, wouldn't it?

Hence, a permanent bridge needs to be built to allow each other to walk across the river with ease to meet each other whenever there is a need and whenever they want to without hindrance from the geographical barrier.

This entire 'River Scenario' is actually describing two persons heart. The two people standing on each side of the river represents the heart of the two strangers. The bridge is the trust which brings the two hearts close together. While the river is the gap/differences between the two hearts. Even though the gap is always there as the two persons are always different and will always be different, but their differences are no longer an issue due to the presence of the bridge which brings them close together. With the bridge (trust), both hearts (people) will be more open to each other, each can go over to the other side of the river easily to take somethings back to keep and also the let the other person help store some things too.

As the function of the bridge, trust is there to allow each others' heart to meet and talk without barrier between them, without concealing too much, without fearing of sharing too much. One can easily get something from the other's heart with trust and also to put somethings into the other's heart for storage. Without trust (bridge), obviously the two person will never be able to do all this. They will only be able to shout on their sides of the river, causing one to barely hear what the other is trying to say or purposely saying it softly so that the other won't get the chance to hear it. At best, one can only row the boat across but not allowed to step onto the land, only speaking to the owner of the other side in his own boat.

Bridges can be built, so can they be destroyed. When the bridge is destroyed (trust has vanished), can the two hearts still be close together? Obviously no. You may argue that the bridge can be re-built. But it may not be as easy as you think. To build a bridge, many aspects need to be considered: The feasibility of having the bridge in the first place (is it a good idea to have it?), the location of it (you can't build it on soft land, as it will sink, you must choose the best spot), the cost of it (effort which needs to be put in), etc. That's why you often see only one bridge at a particular area rather than a few of them leading to the same town, right?

With all these matters to take into consideration, do you still think it is easy to build a bridge? Let's talk about location as an example, since your bridge has been built at the best spot and now the bridge is destroyed. Obviously there would be a lot of debris at that particular spot and some left over of the broken bridge. If you want to build another bridge, there may not be a new location suitable for it. If you want to rebuild at the same location, you will need to put in a lot of effort in the pre-building process as in clearing off the old bridge and cleaning the debris and strengthening the base of the river banks which may have been compromised. So, it may not be as easy as one may think. Obviously, it also hurts a lot when a you see a bridge which you have put in so much effort to build in the first place was destroyed and you may not even think of wanting to rebuild it or build another due to the phobia you had.

Thus, it is a very serious issue to build a bridge in the first place as you are exposing yourself to the pain of having it destroyed later or also hurting others heart who put in equal effort to build it in the first place. All relationships including friendships require a bridge, which is the bridge to the heart... Don't you agree?

多想認識你 - 泳兒