There was a lovely piece in the New York Times recently written by a man whose car had broken down three separate times and who stopped versus who did not stop. It was a thumbed nose to the immigration debate in the United States, and it was a commentary on trustworthiness. I was feeling pretty good about it, until I realized this: I would not have stopped to help the guy. Oh sure, I believe I would have taken the passive approach and phoned for help, but I would not have pulled over, gotten out of my car, and walked over to talk to him. It's a thoroughly modern, practical, and depressing commentary on life in this country, but I would have been nervous about the stranger's intentions. So I would have kept driving.
Maybe this is an indication that I've lived in New York City too long. Here, we know to move quickly past conflict or "something going on." You might find yourself in the middle of it, and odds are, you don't want that. We recognized this in ourselves when my Andy and I were in Australia. As we were walking down the steps of the Sydney Opera House, we were stopped by a police barricade. They were expecting a visiting dignitary, who was approaching by car and leaving by boat. Police helicopters hovered overhead, and a SWAT team with machine guns sat in a boat bobbing next to the visitor's waiting vessel.
The motorcade roared past and we were allowed to move on. We did not stop curiously to see if we could spot a famous person; we beat-feeted it up to the Circular Quay Botanic Gardens, and didn't stop to look til we were atop a hill. Reason: we knew that if something was going to go sideways on a grand scale that day in Sydney, it could be on that spot, triggered by that politician. Nothing happened, of course, but the story indicates our reluctance to find ourselves in the middle of a potentially dangerous situation, the awareness of which is heightened by our big city living.
The younger Stephen Covey has written a book about trust as a measurable asset in the workplace. He calls it "the one thing that changes everything." I agree with him, even on the slightly unsavory point that trust can be commoditized. While work teams should have trust built in from the start, I regret that I don't think I can approach everything in life this way. Maybe I've watched too many scary movies or true life crime shows. Remember Silence of the Lambs? The girl was just trying to help the guy with his arm in a sling move a sofa. And she ended up in a hole in the ground in his basement. No, thank you.
It defies statistical logic to think that there will be a terrorist attack whenever a dignitary flies into town or a violent abduction whenever someone stops to help a guy with car trouble, but the kitty of the world's trustworthiness is running low on chips. What can we do to build it up again?
And you? Would you have stopped?
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