EXPERIENCE + KNOWLEDGE = TRUST, (if trust matters)

Who hopes the person collecting checks has enough experience to know what to do?

I trust the automatic teller at my bank. I put a check in a pneumatic tube, push send, and a face comes on the screen, a face I automatically trust.

If the bank trusts them, I trust them, even though we’re strangers.

Trust is important, maybe more important now.

Bank scandals like the Wells Fargo accounts send a wave of doubt over all banking, as if 2008 wasn’t enough. I chalk it up to experience, a bitter pill.

When does experience matter most?

Trust is more important than ever when the Shit-Stirrer in Chief breaks out an endless stream of opinions on everything.

I understand the NY Daily News isn’t the Bible of truth and fairness to quote from, and other news outlets are more trustworthy, but the whole media moment touched me. The reference to suicide, Easter, coronavirus.

And that face

My best effort each day is making decisions that move shared lives a positive direction; I’m thinking of lives shared across the globe in the present time, each nation with a shared cultural history.

I think of it as an American value.

It’s not that hard to imagine some yokel in their own backyard explaining their pride. In fact, I like the image.

I’ve been looking at faces for sixty years

I remember a few from even earlier.

From kids, to adults, to teachers, parents, and police, I’ve seen lots of faces.

I’ve been on planes, trains, and buses; took the subways in NY, Paris, and London and saw enough people to overflow Texas.

I don’t recall a normal face looking like this. It looks like a face untouched by lessons learned through difficult experience and hard-earned knowledge. What kind of face is it, then?

It is the face of On The Job Training. This is the face that dispenses a certain knowledge and experience. Recalling what’s come from this face goes the wrong direction.

We do things based on experience and knowledge, lessons learned by difficult experience and hard-earned knowledge gleaned over decades. That’s the usual deal.

We do the right thing and expect certain things when it’s based on trust.

There’s little worse than misplaced trust.