Every kind of peaceful cooperation among (men) is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police. –Albert Einstein

Quotes can be a wonderful way to slow us down and have us ponder. Thinking about it, when a group of people are working on something together, more can be accomplished and more quickly when they share a high level of trust. Trust takes time to develop as many of us know. Trust means we can rely on each other, that there is a shared understanding and respect, enhancing the cooperation and communication. Trust is foundational to genuine and solid relationships, at both the micro and macro levels.

Do we engage in the same way with those we do not trust? Trust partly grows over time and experience with a person or situation. Did we take trust for granted in our past? Is trust harder to gain these days? Growing up forty or more years ago did we live in a world where we mostly trusted people, from our parents, to friends, to any of the professionals or leaders we encountered? Or maybe trust wasn’t as common as some of us thought.

Does trust in our day-to-day life seem the same or different? Is it absent in some situations that we used to trust implicitly and now those same situations we question? One assumes we still share mutual trust with the people in our orbit we have trusted over the years. Do we?

Are we more careful now in terms of trust as we meet new people and do new things? In tumultuous times a lot depends on each one of us and how we choose to act and engage. If mutual trust is the basis for peaceful cooperation, it speaks to the powerful impact of trust, and that of being a trustworthy person.