RETIREMENT MEMOIRS: FIDELITY AND TRUST NO MORE

Sunday, February 7, 2021

Fidelity and trust could soon be obsolete.

Fidelity is noncompulsory. Trust is hard to find.

“I promise to be faithful.” “I don’t believe you.”

Two assertions juxtaposed

But now they correspond.

Fidelity, once founded on a pledge

Implied continuing faithfulness to that contract,

Is now a casualty of our times.

Aberrant public mores won.

Trust wore thin and then dissolved.

The adhesive of relationships, gone.

We trust clergy, doctors, leaders and spouses;

We trust parents, and teachers until we don’t.

We don’t when we have lost faith

In the trustworthiness of a promise given,

And the promise neglected.

Our trust is lost and irrecoverable it seems.

We believed fidelity made a promise

That was a virtual guarantee.

Our times are known for distrust

And infidelity.

In our spirits we wish to regain them both,

The constancy of truthfulness

And the allegiance of trust?

Yet no one can be made to trust.

It is a choice to be made when the two feel safe.

Conceivable with open communication,

Indispensable regret and earnest apology,

Met with heartfelt forgiveness.

Only then does trust recover,

Indispensable to robust rapport

So affinity is what ex-antagonists discover.

RETIREMENT MEMOIRS