Trust, and the stories of our lives.

What is loyalty? I find this to be an interesting question, albeit one that sets me ill at ease. Is loyalty that state where people will stand by you, regardless of the situation? But can we really expect those we consider loyal to stand by us through anything? If that's what loyalty was, one could never be loyal to two things, because they could come into conflict. If not that, then what is it? Perhaps it is supposed to be some kind of scale, loyalty and disloyalty. But that doesn't feel quite right. What's the middle? Can someone be only be partially loyal? What of those people who are loyal through another? Is loyalty given in trade really loyalty? And how do you really trust loyalty? You can only see it by example, but if those examples aren't ones which would test loyalties (and how many of those situations truly come up in our lives), how much can you see? It comes down to the same question as that of trust. Who can we trust, and how do we understand this? It always comes down to the same old conundrum: To know who to trust, you have to in some sense already trust them or distrust them. It comes down to something behind it all that we can't really see, I don't think. And when it gets to those murky unknowns, that dark, creeping doubt gets the chance to seep in.

Then again, that creeping doubt may come, and it's never pleasant, but over time it may lead you to looking and appreciating those things you -do- find as evidence. Those wonderfully unbiased, unscripted times where things simply show the truth. It leaves you wishing you could see that again, even though you know any attempt on your part to see that would make it scripted, but all the same, it is a comforting thing to find. People try so hard to avoid that doubt, and it makes sense. It's unpleasant, never really fun to get through. But all the same, doesn't it lead you, eventually, to something better than if you never had it to begin with? In the end, it's something like what you see in fiction: You need to suffer for your happy ending, and then wait for the sequel so you can do it again.