Trust Love One More Time

During the last few weeks, we’ve led a short time of conversations and questions and answers after each of the performances of I’m Proud of You, at Open Stage, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the original play about the healing relationship between Fred (Mister) Rogers and journalist Tim Madigan. 

We had a few questions that came up several times in one form or another during those conversations.

One of those questions, paraphrased, was essentially this:

What do you say to someone who has been hurt emotionally and finds it hard to be open and vulnerable and to trust anyone again, for fear of continually getting hurt.

Our answer, when asked this question, is invariably a version of this, by poet and author Dr. Maya Angelou:

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and

always one more time.”

Life hurts sometimes. Life hurts especially when we love. Nothing hurts more than being hurt by someone we love, by implicit trust being shattered. It can make us jaded about love, hopeless in regard to trusting again. If we’re honest, we’ve all felt jaded and hopeless at some point in our lives. If we’re even more honest, we all have to admit we’ve shattered someone’s trust, someone who loves us and whom we’ve hurt very badly. 

It’s part of being human, these often imperfect, complex, insecure, uncertain, self-involved beings. 

It’s easy to give up, to feel as if we can never trust again, that we must never trust again, in order not to be hurt.

But when we give up, or at least harden ourselves to trusting, reaching out, or connecting relationally and vulnerably to some others, we can descend into loneliness and isolation, which is not a healthy place to be.

This week, we had a conversation with a podcast guest - author and trust expert Randy Conley - and talked about these concepts with him. As part of his response, Randy quoted the classic line in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "In Memoriam A.H.H”:

It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

It’s a classic because it’s true. 

To never love another emotionally or spiritually - whether it’s in a romantic relationship, a familial relationship, or a close friendship relationship - is an arid place in which to live. We are all created and wired for relationships and connections of one kind or another.

And we cannot give up on trying to find people we can trust and with whom we can be as open, vulnerable, and authentic as possible. 

The only way to create human connection of whatever sort we need, is to keep on trying, to keep on being open to possibilities, to keep on showing love in everything we believe and say and do. For when we don’t, to live in isolation and loneliness denies our most basic human needs. 

Fred Rogers was a master at connecting with others and fostering trust that enabled others to open up to trust and love again. We learn in the play that he was hurt often as a child, bullied by others because of his shy, sensitive nature. Instead of giving up on others and descending into a place of jadedness, Fred opened himself to connect, and in the process taught others how to open up and connect, too. His was a love that never gave up. He knew the pain of isolation and loneliness as a child, and his response was to lean in and keep looking, keep trying, keep loving one more time, again and again. It’s a courageous act, and sometimes we will get hurt. 

But in the end, to trust love one more time, even in its imperfections, is so much better than to never feel love at all. 

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash