by Summayyah Sadiq-Ojibara

Created on: May 05, 2008   Last Updated: July 14, 2011

Trust is an amazing thing, a most important ingredient in any relationship.

Friendships, marriages and kinship are some of the major institutions of life in which this value has a high expectation of worth when applied.

However, trust should manifest in virtually every area of life and even in the most commonplace relationships.

Systems are put in place in countries to enable the process of quality living. This to a large extent is based on trust.

Garbage cans are placed around with the expectation and trust that people will dispose their trash in them appropriately.

The transport system is structured in such a manner that the traveler is trusted to vet/present/pay at different points of embarking and disembarking.

Traffic regulations are put in place with the hope that they will be obeyed.

The list goes on.

In the same vein, public officers, leaders and anyone placed in various positions of authorities are trusted by the people with expectations that they will deliver to the best of their abilities what they set out to do.

Trust comes hand in hand with integrity, sincerity, a consciousness of God or at least a moral base and importantly too, information/communication.

In some of the areas stated above the general thing that runs through is the fact that the structure does has a strong base on trust, it also has checks, enforcers and things that enable a working system.

Simply put, trust is reinenforced with a definite system of implementation backed by penalties from disobedience.

In major areas of relationships however, some of which have been stated above, trust assumes a more prominent position based on a moral premise rather than a reward/punishment system.

In marriage for example, the most apparent consequence of infidelity is probably separation or divorce, not fines, incarceration or even loss of life.

However the most fundamental damage to marriage from an absence of trust would be a steady breakdown of that relationship.

Betrayal of trust, will take away respect, peace, happiness, sometimes even faith and eventually love and could directly or indirectly result in loss of limbs or worse life. It also more often than not affect more than the immediate parties involved.

Hence, children, other family members and ultimately the larger society are affected by its far-reaching consequences leaving a trail of scars so deep that they continue to tarnish any other relationship subsequent to the broken one.

The loss of trust could indeed lead to a damaged

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