Week 13/June 19, 2015
As I was writing my post for last week, the word “‘trust”
got my attention. I looked this word up in the Dictionary of Word Origins by John Ayto, a second reference tool I
use as a back up to my favorite dictionary by Joseph T. Shipley, who doesn’t always
feature the word I’m curious about.
Ayto writes: “Trust was probably borrowed from Old
Norse traust ‘help, confidence,
firmness.’” What struck me immediately as I read this sentence was the idea
that help and confidence are linked together in the very first meaning of the
word. We have to be taught how to have confidence. And we thrive when we have help,
support and guidance. The theme of confidence comes up often in my therapy
sessions, a client beating himself (or herself) up because he does not have
this quality in a desired area of life. The distorted belief is that he is just
supposed to innately possess this ability, and then shame whispers the lie that
somehow he is defective because confidence is not being experienced.
I also like the idea of development. It embraces the concept
of starting from a place of not knowing or understanding and moving towards
growth through learning, trial and error. Practice. I’ve never had a client say
“No” to the question, “Do you have the ability to learn?” We don’t look at a
baby who is beginning to crawl and shame him because he isn’t walking yet.
There is an understanding that an infant is going through a natural progression
of building skill and competence through small shifts and coordination of
complex movements that we take for granted as adults because we have long mastered
walking.
The challenge is staying in an objective space that quiets
shame. We also may have to recognize and unlearn a coping mechanism that is no
longer useful to us and is getting in the way of our being effective in the
present moment. It’s just not easy being human.
The second sentence in Ayto’s exploration of the word origin
of trust says: “This, together with its
modern German and Dutch relatives trost
and troost ‘consolation,’ goes back
to the same prehistoric Germanic base as produced English true and truth.”
Bear with me as I take you on the final leg of this word
journey. The on-line Oxford Dictionary defines consolation as “The comfort
received by a person after a loss or disappointment.” Wow. Reading that
line choked me up momentarily because the very definition describes the
transition I am going through right now. I have been so consoled by the
Universe through experiences in nature, songs and the love of friends and family.
I am finding firm ground within myself as
my life shifts from being in a partnership to living on my own again. And
there is no shame in having to crawl before I learn to walk.
NN