Do you trust me?

Trust is an interesting thing. When you give trust to someone else, it’s pretty much like you’re saying, “I feel comfortable giving you power over some part of my life.” Think about it, there’s probably no stronger trust out there than the trust a child has in his or her parents. The child is fully confident that the parent will be able to properly feed, clothe, teach, love and respect them. As a result, the child agrees to let their parents have control over those parts of their lives.

Plenty of other relationships require trust. What about the friend that you confide a secrete or personal bit of information to. Once you’ve shown your trust by telling them something important, you’ve now given them power to do whatever they want with that information. They could either keep your secrete in confidence, spread it to everyone they see, or even use that information to hurt you. Once you’ve decided to trust someone, you’re power over what they can do with that part of your life you’ve shared with them is now out of your control. You’ve given that power and control to them.

The reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is because of my experiences in medical school. Lots of people that I’ve interacted with have put a great amount of trust in me, and they’ve done so simply because I’m a medical student. People have opened up to me very personal parts of their lives, their minds, their actions, their habits, their thoughts, and even their bodies. They’ve told and shown me things that they would never show their closest friend or relative. Any why have they done it? Because they trust that I will be able to use that information to help them and that I won’t abuse the trust they are giving me.

Now, trust can often be misplaced. In the example of my work as a medical student, people have put a lot more trust in me than I think I deserve. Even though I tell people I’m a medical student, I don’t think they really understand how little of medicine I really know at the present time. I mean, people tell me the most intimate parts of their lives, not realizing that I have no idea what’s wrong with them. Not only that, but at the stage I’m at in med school right now everything I do is just for my own practice, it has no impact on the treatment of the patient at all. It’s kind of scary to think about how trust can be so easily won just by wearing a short white coat.

To blog or not to blog?

A few years ago, when the idea of blogging started becoming a big thing, when everyone and their dog sent you an e-mail telling you that they wanted to "share their ideas with the world", I must admit that I didn't get the idea of blogging at all. "You mean people just write about whatever they want? And then they put it up on the internet for everyone to see? And people actually read these mindless babblings?" I must admit, I was a nay-sayer and an unbeliever of the realm of blog.

And to tell you the truth, deep down I still am. I mean, what the heck does the word "blog" mean anyway? I think that most of the blog posts out there are not worth the 30 seconds it would take to skim over them. Why would I want to know the opinion of some faceless entity on subjects ranging from politics to religion to pop culture? Why would I want to delve into the psyche of other random people when I am barely aware of my own feeling and thought processes most of the time?

And that's where I have my epiphany, and the whole reasoning behind the world of computer bloggers suddenly comes into focus for the very first time. Blogs aren't created because the blogger really thinks that his/her opinions are going to go out there and change the world. They don't write for other people. They write for themselves. There's something about writing that helps you organize your thoughts and look at your life in a new light. Humans are set apart from the rest animal kingdom by the fact that they are self-aware. They are able to analyze not only what they think and feel, but analyze why they think and feel that way. When you write, you can take the endless train of thought that normally zooms through your head, rarely making a stop for any maintenance, and plop them down into something concrete. Suddenly your thoughts become words you can read on a page. They are physical, visible things, and they often look different then they did when when they were an endless stream of commentary running in your mind.

That brings me to my next question: if any writing is useful for examining your life, why not write a book, or essays, or articles, or short stories, or anything that is a little more "literary" than a blog? The answer: Motivation. The idea of doing all the research and preparation, and then doing all the writing and revising necessary to actually write something like that makes me tired and drives the desire to write right out of me. A blog is a quick easy way to spew out your ideas in a quick and dirty way. Are most blogs innovative, new, fresh, literary, refined or important? No. Is it worth your time to actually read most blogs? Probably not. Does blogging actually help the blogger analyze his/her life and become more self-aware? Hopefully.

So, here we go. I am fully aware that I will most likely post hardly anything on this blog. I fully expect that no one will ever read it. Nothing I say will be important or will "change the world". But, hopefully I actually take time to write something every once in a while, and in so doing can take a little time to take stock on how my life's doing. Happy blogging!