Yesterday I saw a very interesting concept outside a lovely coffee shop on Arbutus Street in Vancouver. There is an open cupboard on the sidewalk where people drop off books for others to read, borrow books, and put them back. I was informed that this sidewalk library has been around for years, with no vandalism, and in fact, has created a beautiful connection among people who don’t know each other. There is much to learn from this beautiful concept of trust.

At our workplace when we set up systems based on trust, we give people the signal that we respect them and acknowledge their value system. This not only takes away the pressure of controlling and micro-managing, but it also unleashes the spirit of ownership and commitment in our teams. Humans respond better to love and trust than to control and fear.

When we give our children their freedom, not only does it take away from conversations that cause friction, it inculcates in them responsibility and accountability. Of course they will make their mistakes, but the biggest mistake we can make is to replace trust with control. When we continue trusting them, they become trustworthy. And they need to trust us, knowing we will always be there to hold them when they fall.

Families are built or broken because of trust. The only way different personalities can happily co-exist is when everyone recognises trust to be the glue. In a family, we may differ, but we need never doubt each other.

Societies flourish when trust is the operating and governing paradigm. It unleashes creativity and innovation, like the open sidewalk library, adding value to our lives. Some will not understand and will misuse the system. As society matures, the good become the custodians of the system. But we can only achieve that when our faith in trust does not waver.

We can approach life in one of two ways; we can either believe most people are dishonest, and therefore build strong controls around us and deal with people on the premise of mistrust, or we can believe that most people are good and can be trusted, and therefore we build our systems and relationships based on trust. It is of course true that we need to be careful, and there will be some who will take advantage and abuse our trust. For the fear of the few, we shouldn’t lose out on the strong trusting relationships we can build with the many.

The ability to trust does not come from being naive or innocent, it comes from the deepest space of security and faith, which not everyone can understand. It is very easy to lock ourselves up in doubt and mistrust. But we truly open the best in life, when we understand, experiment, and live a life built on trust and trustworthiness. Life is not about how many doors we have guarded, but how many libraries of trust we have opened in our own lifetime.

(Picture-The sidewalk library on Arbutus Street, Vancouver)