Betrayal and Trust: This Video Speaks Volumes

Trust is everything and it’s betrayal can have everlasting and profound effects. Then I saw this.

I took the liberty of transcribing it because the words about trust and betrayal are just as beautiful, and inspiring, as the dancers and their abdominals. Holy crap.

I don’t know who wrote this piece, but credit goes to the dancers, Alya Titarenko and Gael Ouisse, (who may, or may not be the writers), and Cirque Du Soleil.

Alya and Gael have to trust each other, as acrobats in Cirque du Soleil they sometimes literately put their lives in someone else’s hands. Trust is a confusing thing. It seems so simple but when you try to pin it down, it can be elusive.

I think of the way that my body sits on a surface that’s new to me, unknown, and how my muscles remain tight, anticipating anything, and I’m constantly aware of that surface.

Over time, with familiarity, I can relax and start to lean back. For many of us that initial tension exists so much of the time, we expend so much energy watching and calculating, trying to predict, reading signals in people, ready for anything to change suddenly, preparing to be disappointed, so much energy spent. 

We talk about trust as something we build, as if it’s a structure or a thing, but in that building there seems to be something about letting go. And what it affords us is a luxury that allows us to stop thinking, to stop worrying that someone won’t catch us if we fall, to stop constantly scanning for inconsistencies, to stop wondering how other people act when they’re not in our presence. It allows us to relax a part of our minds so that we can focus on what’s in front of us. 

And that’s why it’s such a tragedy when it’s broken. A betrayal can make you think of all of the other betrayals that are waiting for you and things that you haven’t thought of; people you rely on, and you can feel yourself tightening up, bracing, and in the worse cases, you might resolve to trust no one.

But that doesn’t really work. Trust is your relationship to the unknown; what you can’t control and you can’t control everything, and it’s not all or none, it’s a slow and study practice of learning about the capacity of the world and it’s worth it to keep trying and it’s not easy. 

Alya says that trust is like a fork; not one way, many ways, physical, emotional, maybe something else. I almost imagine trust as these invisible hands that we stretch out into the world looking for someone to hold onto, as we walk into the unknown future. Alya and Gael began practicing together as friends and now they are a couple. It took time.

So who do you trust and how can you grow?