Integrity

Is it normal that the older I get, the less I trust people?

On my journey on this earth, so far, I found more and more people betrayed my trust. Maybe I'm wrong, but my trust philosophy is like this:

First, I trust you.
Until you break my trust.
Then I will never trust you anymore.
Until you proven otherwise.

And now I come to a point where I won't really trust you, even at first, because somewhere in the future, I think you'll stab me from behind. Or maybe from the front. Right under my nose.

And the most painful thing is, my trust are broken from the people that I trusted the most. My inner circle. That's where the hurt run deep. Like I couldn't believe they would do such a thing, but they did. Doesn't matter now that they make amends. They still hurt me. The hurt was there.

Now why the trust was broken? Was it something I do wrong? Something I do right? Something I didn't do at all? I have no idea. Whatever the excuse is, I found that if someone, no matter who that "one" is, betrayed the principality of a point, then the trust is broken. And our relationship will no longer be the same like it was before. It will never be the same relationship.

Now, when I no longer trust that person, next come to this: No matter how good the theory that come out from that person's mouth, I would not think those words as face value anymore. As a matter of fact, I would labeled them as a hypocrite.  Someone that doesn't do the right thing, doesn't deserve to say a right thing. Action speaks louder than words. Theory is nothing.

I think that the reason why those people broke vow and promises and the principle of things, is because they lack of one thing. They lack of this high quality ingredient in their life. With this thing missing in their life, they are easily be compromised and do the wrong thing. That thing wise people called "Integrity".

Integrity is doing the right thing. No matter how hard it is. Actually, if you have a habit to apply integrity in every single thing of the aspect of your life, you'll find it easier to apply. It is so easy to do the right thing once you set it in motion. We human are a habitual being. The more we stay firm to our integrity, the easier it is to say no to the wrong thing. It's super easy.

There are 7 billion people in the world. I doubt how many of those who has integrity grained in their life. Maybe 50%? 25%? Or just 10%? If there's only 1% from 7 billion in the world who has integrity, that sums up to 70 million people in the world. Are you optimist that there are 70 million people in the world that still have their integrity intact? No cheating, no doing the wrong thing, and just being super awesome in justice and all? Being Mr (or Mrs) Incredible? Or is it only 0.01%, which is 700,000 people?

Well, anyway, with these life lessons that somehow was given to me lately, I found that it's more important than ever to keep my integrity intact, no matter what the circumstances is. It's probably one of the rarest valuable in the world. Integrity lead to dignity. Integrity build character. Which lead us to be a trustworthy person.

Trust is earned, it's not an entitlement.
Trust is proven, not given.
Trust is built, not inherited.

And a trustworthy person are the ones whose opinion can be counted the most.