I  exerted myself to help someone in desperate need of more assistance than I had a legal requirement to give, and it seems that this person took my trust and threw it down a sewer.

My thoughts have staggered from shock to chagrin to fury, settling, at last, on sorrow.  I rarely trust anyone although I often help people, but this individual did have my trust even though I probably had adequate information from which to know that my trust would be abused.

I involved others in my leap of faith, and along with me, those others now lick their wounds, shake their heads, and, being good-hearted, think mainly of what this person will do without the help that we, individually and collectively, will no longer give them.

In the hours following discovery of the turn of events that sent my charitable efforts crashing into the dust, I found myself almost regretting the evolution of my soul from complainer to empathizer.  I found myself thinking about the person whom I had endeavored to help, and feeling sorry for this person, for the circumstances that might have led them to act as they apparently did:  the desperation, the ignorance, some past event that might have marred the potential that existed before the fall.

I won’t trust this person again.  I’ll do damage control; and when another lost soul needs me, I’ll probably do a reality check or at least undertake due diligence before I involve anyone else in my crusade on the next person’s behalf.  Sad, the world; but I am resolved to still venture forth through its winding roads, climb its mountains, linger in its valleys. Though the world can wound, it can also delight.  Though the hand of kindness can be bitten, it can also be taken, and held, and caressed.  And so I’ll persevere, though in this case trust has been broken.  My ability to trust has, perhaps, been hampered, but it has not been beaten.