Stupid Trust

 We've talked about the indifference of the universe a couple of times in class when we discussed The Stranger. It hurts to recognize it, but with a book like that, you really can't avoid the reality of your situation sometimes. 

Me personally, though, I still have this stupid sense of lingering trust that the world couldn't be so cruel. It's kind of like when you used to wish for world peace as a child. Now, we know it's not that simple, but we might still hope for benevolence in other spheres of our life, like kind strangers and bosses at your part-time job that actually care about your well-being (can you tell I hate working food service with a passion?). This idea is what I was reminded of when I read through Ocean Vuong's "Tell Me Something Good". Specifically, these lines pulled my thoughts about stupid trust out the most:

    "... the surest shelter was always the thoughts 

    above your head. That it's fair -- it has to be --

    how our hands hurt us, then give us

    the world."

The poem follows an enlisted soldier's thoughts that helped him cope with being deployed. It reminded me of how we try to recover from hitting problems or low points in our own lives. It's hard to talk about, though. How we could be lying to ourselves while thinking like this and how there may very well be betrayal or danger just around the corner. The world's indifference is the cruelest shadow to our childish hope, and once one recognizes this, it's hard to pull yourself away from the looming dreadful feeling.

That's no way to live, though, is it?

I'm still figuring out the right amount of trust to give out. For me, it's still like a pendulum from stupid trust to trust issues. What I'm able to realize now, though, is that there is no "fairness". It's just the way things happen. You've just got to make sure your walls are strong enough to keep the bad parts of our indifferent world at bay--or at least try your hardest. That might take me a long time, though. Maybe it's just hard for me to admit I know nothing at all about what life has in store for me, though, if I'm right about how I can't rely on anything to be fair to me. 

But maybe it's always been better to focus on what I can control after all.