Trust Me While I Hold a Razor to Your Neck

I was at a Mall with about seven hours to kill.  I mulled over the many things I could do to kill time – which is funny because time lives on long after those of us who have been trying to kill it are long dead ourselves...but I digress.  I ended up walking into a barbershop – not a salon, not a spa – a barbershop.  I was going to get a haircut and get out.  That’s The Man’s Plan.

The last time I got a haircut, the plan was the same:  get in, get cut, get out.  A short snooze, a complicated shampooing, and two hours later, I was out of the salon and out nine hundred bucks.  Somewhere between “just take a bit off the top” and “would you like to try this product on your hair” I made an eight-hundred-peso decision.

What kind of man walks into a barbershop and spends a thousand bucks?

On this day, I did it again.  As this barber was pulling my hair and clipping away with his scissors, I suddenly remembered how relaxing this process could be.  The way my hair pulls at its roots in my scalp at the moment when the steel of the scissors cuts through the handful of it being held by the barber...it’s a magical feeling that makes me wish I had The Lion King’s Mane.  I wanted this haircut to last three hours.

The barber was aware of this, and must have picked up that I was looking for reasons to not get up and leave, because he started massaging my scalp.  When he suggested that it would feel great if I let him rub some menthol into it, I said “uhhhm…” – which in parlor-speak meant “I helplessly agree.”  When he suggested that he could clip my beard, I said “uhhhm.”  When he asked me if I wanted a shoulder massage I said “aw hell yeah, why not?” 

And when he asked me to lie on my stomach so he could go to work on the “lamig” in my back, I thought “as long as he doesn’t pull down his pants, I trust him...”

I step out of the barbershop two hours and one thousand bucks later.

What is this power these barbers have over me?  He says “sit there,” and I sit there.  He says “tilt your head up,” and I do it.  He says “I will pour a vat of menthol and rub it onto the top of your head,” and I say “go for it!”  This total stranger not only owns me for the two hours I am under his spell, he also gets to decide how I am going to look for the next thirty days.

Why?  Because I trust him.

The Super Secret Law of the barbershop, restaurants, and public transportation: Trust does not have to be earned, it is awarded at our convenience.

There are people I’ve known half my life who I would not trust to boil water.  I have close friends that I would never pass the ball to.  I have siblings who can suggest all they want, because I will never listen to their ideas.  I will not let my Dad pick what CD to play, because I don’t trust his musical sensibilities.  I am a control freak and a perfectionist who has organized and held auditions for parts as meaningless as “face in crowd”... 

And yet we all have in our lives a long line of complete strangers that we grant unquestioning confidence in.

Bus drivers: they’re professionals, right?  I mean, they DO have a license!  Does it really matter that this guy with only enough education to read (and ignore) a stop sign is piloting a ten-ton steel box with sixty lives at his mercy as he literally tries to make it fly over the highway?

Cab drivers: surely they know exactly where we’re going, right?  We can give him an address – any address – and then close our eyes so he can just wake us up when we get there.  And the meter, which looks like a clock because the numbers on it are rising every second, is probably industry-standard-legit, right?

On the Flipside, Jeepney drivers seem to implicitly trust all the passengers to pay before they get off.  And they trust that wherever you say you are getting off is in fact the truth, and that you would never think of shortchanging them.

When we choose to eat at a restaurant, we trust the cooks without question.  Sorry, are they Chefs?  If you say so.  As long as we believe that they all wash their hands and know what they are doing.  The waiters are going to be nice and get everything exactly right.  The busboys are going to clean all the tables we are eating on carefully and thoroughly - with that one scrap-rag of old underwear on the right hand and a near-empty spritz-bottle of what is probably only water on the left.

Listen, I worked at a McDonald’s.  I know all about the horrors we are capable of.  You trust us every day.  You trust us enough to complain about your food and return it to the kitchen knowing with absolute faith that we are going to “fix” whatever you say is wrong with it.

(We “fix it” alright.  Super Secret Special Sauce always makes up for the inconvenience, and it makes both the complaining customer and the irritated kitchen staff very very happy indeed.)

We trust the random traffic cop when we ask for directions.  We trust the Bank Guard with his rusty shotgun and six shells to fight off machine-gun toting robbers.  We trust village security guards to keep the bad guys out.  We trust the mall guards to check the trunks of cars for any signs of a bowling ball with a candle on it.

We let the plumber and the cable guy deep into the house – all the way to our bedrooms – and we personally show him where everything is!  We even show him where one might gain entry into the house without coming through the door...

We let random guys in nice white coats put their fingers in places where only our own fingers should go.  We let them flash a light down our personal abysses just because he says he was trained for it.  It must be their expensive haircuts.

When a priest says something about life, he is “obviously” drawing this wisdom from actual experience.  My personal favorite part is when he gives sex and marriage advice.  When the doctors at hospitals insist that we need that six-figure procedure if we want to live, we take out a loan.  We trust that we need all those pills and that the side effects are negligible...because the other eleven pills in our three-page prescription are there to cover for it.

The Super Secret Law of the signed document and Raffle Promos:  If you can show a signature on an official looking document, it MUST be for real.  And If you dangle a reward, not only is trust immediate, cooperation is complete as well.

If all we need to do for a one in a million chance to win this new Honda City is to give you all our information...we will do it.  Even The Batman might write down his complete name, address, contact number, and a detailed map to the Batcave just because it is required on a form.

Scammers, anglers, internet hackers, Nigerian bankers, Bill Gates, terminally ill children who love to email, and multilevel marketers ...all of them know this Law by heart!  Do Forever Living Products really last forever...?

The Super Secret Law of salvation as the ultimate currency:  If you can dangle any form of salvation, you can own my soul!

I trust when there is a reward.  I trust when I really have no choice – or rather, am too lazy to choose something else.  I trust when it is convenient.  I trust complete strangers because they are supposed to be professionals who can do things I cannot.  I trust drivers because the alternative is to walk home.  I trust my boss because he promised me that the company is growing and that there is a big office waiting for me.  This time next year, he says, I will be sitting in my corner office with a view of the bay...

It is truly sobering to realize that I can choose to trust anyone at anytime – it does not really have to be earned from me!  I just make a (lazy) decision, and suddenly I am sleeping soundly while a complete stranger has a razor pressed against my exposed neck.

Wait, that’s a good thing, right?

I can keep it this simple then:  I can simply trust everyone until they let me down.  And when they let me down, I will give them a few more chances.  I will stop living by the paradigm that only lets me give credit where credit is due!  I will stop thinking that trust, love, and respect can actually be “wasted on the unworthy” – if they want it from me, all they have to do is receive it.  Love, respect, credit - People are always asking for it, and no matter how much they actually get, they don't realize they are already getting it:

Can you imagine how lucky we are to be in a system so flawed that we can get credit first (hired from nothing but an impressive padded resume and a photoshopped profile pic) and have the luxury of earning it after - IF WE CHOOSE TO...?  A company that hires me will have paid me about three months worth of salary before they finally realize that I am completely and utterly inept at my job.  They pay me that much before they find out they can’t trust me anymore – what a sweet deal that is!  Trusted first, earned (or not) later!

We get credit for our potential.  Rookie professional athletes and their multimillion dollar contracts, the carpenter you contracted to fix your kitchen for the next two weeks, the man you fall in love with...all we really have to do is fulfill this promise called potential.  Or not, because there will always be a fair amount of messing up - and most problems arise when I have a different definition from the people around me regarding the "potential" I was supposed to achieve - but I can shrug, apologize, take the money, and run.

The Super Secret Law of Michelle Pfieffer’s Love:  Everyone starts out with an A, and it is up to us to lose it.

It’s great that nobody really knows who I am till much much later, but I can get credit for being worth every penny and every second right NOW.  It’s like this gift called Life – nobody deserves it, nobody earned it, but we all start out with it – and we have complete control over what to do with it.

So when you're not too busy asking for trust, love, respect, and credit, maybe you can shut your mouth, open your eyes, and just take it.  By the Grace of God and this gift called Life, it's already there.

The alternative is to live in a box experimenting and collating data to wait for complete proof of ability, reasons for faith, and guarantees of success and happiness.  Lived this way, our lives end on deathbeds where we know everything but experienced nothing.

It’s time to stop holding on to my love and saving it for the people who deserve it.  I don’t deserve to live, but here I am.  Eddie Vedder said it best:  “He still gives his love, just gives it away, and the love he receives is the love that is saved.”

Trust is love.  Give it away!  Be naive!  Be the toddler who wanders into traffic chasing after a ball, and you will see firsthand that all the cars will stop and everyone will make sure you are unhurt.  Don’t bother asking the barber to break out some curriculum vitae and a scrapbook of headshots – just let him cut your damn hair and maybe put menthol on your scalp!

You are out on a limb, and I am holding out my hand from the edge.  You are heavy and I am rail-thin.  You have no choice.  Take my hand.  You will feel safer.  You will be happier...or dead anyway.  So trust me.