A Matter of Trust

I am a misanthrope, or at least that’s how I come across. My reflections in this blog definitely paint me as one, with my take on human nature. A line from Scrooge The Musical by Leslie Bricusse sums it up, when Scrooge sings ‘I Hate People’!

“Picked at random, I can’t stand them!’

That much is true. The full picture is more complex. I don’t read people very well so I tend to put the barricades up. If I assume that they are not acting selflessly then I can be safe in a manner of speaking. From my school days onwards, people have been unreliable and, in a number of cases, actively unpleasant. My ‘friends’ from my teens and twenties have one by one drifted away, ‘proving’ to me that they weren’t real friends in the first place. I have come to the conclusion that assuming that people are not going to be anything other than transient is the best approach.

What this means is that I don’t have favourite people outside of my immediate family. I just don’t want to let people in to that extent. My approach is both safe and restrictive but at present I don’t want to change it.

I have just been on holiday to Salzburg and I have met, in passing, many people who were patient with my low level German and who made the effort to help me by switching to English when I was completely at sea. The interactions showed me the positive side of human nature up close and in a way that was very difficult to argue against. It is experiences like these that make me feel like I could perhaps temper my approach, but I think it’s going to remain a work in progress because you can’t really change your basic nature.

I have always said that I only need my wife and that is undoubtedly true. To be honest, the rest of the world doesn’t count as long as I can rely on her, which I can totally. However, my suspicious nature makes life outside the house more difficult and I feel like I have to change my mindset to some extent. I have doubts that it will work, but I won’t know if I don’t try. I can’t promise I will try, but 2026 needs a resolution or two so it could be that I give it a go!