This I Believe

Matthew Olson

Mrs. Anthony

ENG 101

February 13, 2015

This I Believe

            I have many core life beliefs that I value that make me who I am. My values define my personality and my beliefs on life. Out of all of my life beliefs, trust and respect are the most important. They aren’t two principles, but one, that act hand in hand together. If you don’t have one, then you won’t have the other. I have learned this through the many life experiences I have endured in my past.

            Trust is very important, it’s one of the two beliefs they will need to be a good person. Someone that is distrustful will be lonely their entire life’s. I had so called “friends” that I will never trust again since they decided to lie to me about something they did to my face, even when I knew the truth. This person told me, “I have your back man” or “I would not lie to you about this.” Then a month later I would found out from multiple people that this so called “friend” tried to get people to come beat me up because I was with a girl that he liked at the time. These kind people aren’t friends, a friend is someone you can trust to tell you the truth, not someone that will go behind you and stab you in the back. Also, if you don’t act trustworthy, then I don’t want to talk to you. Many people are untrustworthy these days. To me, anyone that lies, cheats, or steals is a crook and I don’t want anything to do with that. If I can’t trust you, how will I know if you won’t turn on me when I need you the most? Most of my old group of friends became untrustworthy when I needed them the most. I just broke went through a break up with my girlfriend and I was really down. I asked and tried to talk to people just so someone would be there to help keep my mind off of it. Every single person that I use to hang out with never messaged me, I actually later found out that they all were purposely ignoring me, even after I helped all of them at some point in their lives’. I’ve given advice on problems they were having, I’ve taken some in if they had nowhere to go, I’ve done everything I could to be a good person. Even after all of that, they still lied to me and hurt me. They have talked behind my back, they have cheated on me, and they have stolen from me. I also take that as a huge sign of disrespect.

            Trust comes with respect. If I trust you, it also means I respect you and if you disrespect me, then I don’t trust you. If you lie to my face and I know that you’re lying, I know you can’t be trusted, so why would I respect you for not telling me the truth? When I respect someone, I tell them my ideas about life, I tell them what I want to do with my life, and I will never lie to them. I tell the truth most of the time, but I sometimes lie to people I don’t like so there won’t be any conflict between the other person and I, which also means that I don’t respect them enough to tell them what I think about them truly. The people that I am talking about are the ones that also lied to me. I acted like a friend when I was around them, but I really did not like them. Even though I did not like them, I did not talk about them behind their backs. I only told people that I trust that I just did not like them.

            Overall, trust and respect are the most important core beliefs that I have to this day since I have been lied to by many of my old friends, cheated on, and stolen from. I do trust very easily though, because the new people that come into my life are not the old ones. I won’t be unfair and not trust anyone because of the past, but I am a lot more cautious than I use to be.