On Trust

My dear friend,

The candle tonight burns the soft yellow that belongs to quiet reflection. I had a long conversation earlier this evening with someone I deeply respect — about leadership, about responsibility, about the invisible things that hold people together. Our thoughts kept returning to one word. Trust.

It stayed with me after the call ended. The word followed me into the silence of this room, into the stillness of this light. Trust. The word itself feels delicate, but it carries the weight of everything that matters. It is the foundation beneath friendship, the link that binds colleagues, and the quiet confidence that makes teams possible. Without it, no structure lasts. Systems break. Progress stalls. Even love loses direction.

For a long time, I struggled with trust. I had been failed by people I believed in, disappointed by promises that faded without explanation. Over the years, I learned to stand alone, to rely only on my own judgment and ability. It felt like strength, but it was not. It was survival.

In leadership, that instinct becomes a cage. When you stop trusting others, you stop letting them rise. You build systems that function but never breathe. You turn relationships into transactions and teamwork into task management, and sometimes into risk management.

I began to rediscover the meaning of trust years ago, in a place far from comfort or certainty. It was in South Sudan, during the rainy season, when the skies never cleared and the earth turned to water. We were trying to reach a remote area to meet a local leader who could help us access communities cut off by flooding. On paper and looking at the map, it seemed simple, almost manageable. In reality, nothing in South Sudan is ever simple once the rains begin. When the wet season comes, the roads disappear. Paths that were firm one week turn into deep, unpredictable rivers of mud the next.

The meeting mattered deeply. Entire villages had become isolated. Food supplies could not get through, water points were contaminated, and basic trade had stopped. We needed to reach that leader because he was the key to opening safe passage. He knew the routes, the people, the other leaders and the terrain. Without him, there would be no access, and without access, there would be no help.

The challenge was not only the rain itself but also the geography between the two areas. What would normally be a few hours by car in the dry season had turned into an unpredictable, all-day journey. Rivers had swallowed roads, and detours led only to more water. Every turn carried the same question: would the ground hold, or would we sink?

We had one quad bike - a single machine carrying both of us and what little equipment we could strap to the back. There was no second vehicle and no backup plan. We had no satellite phone to call for help if something happened, and there was no phone network for hours in any direction. I knew that once we left the compound, we were on our own until we returned. The risk was real, but so was the purpose. We had to go. That was the only option.

The morning was heavy and grey. The air smelled of wet soil and diesel. My colleague, J, stood by the bike, checking the tires, the chains, and the small fuel tank. He was our logistician, our driver, and someone I had come to consider a friend. He had that steady kind of presence that never rushed. The land was familiar to him in ways it would never be to me. Before the trip, he looked up and asked, “You trust me?”

For a moment, I did not answer. It was not that I doubted him. I doubted the part of myself that had forgotten how to trust. I gave a small nod and said, “Yes.”

He smiled and said quietly, “No, I mean really trust me. If I tell you to jump, you jump. If I tell you to duck, you duck. If I say stop, we stop. Agreed?”

That was trust in its truest form: not a word, not an idea, but a decision between fear and faith.

We began the journey. The road was more water than ground. The bike skidded, the mud rose in waves, and the rain came in sheets that blurred everything. Every few minutes, J shouted directions, and I followed. When he said “Hold on,” I gripped tighter. When he said “Close your eyes,” I did. He knew what I did not, that thick mud could blind faster than it dries.

Hours passed. The world became a rhythm of water, noise, and motion. At some point, I lost any sense of where we were going. There was no map, no signal, no visible horizon. The only constant was his voice, clear, calm, certain. Somewhere between those instructions and silences, I felt something change. I stopped trying to control the ride. I began to trust that J would bring us there safely. It was one of the hardest lessons of my life: to let go without giving up.

When we finally arrived after several hours, drenched and covered in mud, the local leader was waiting under a sheet of plastic stretched between two trees. We sat together on wooden crates, drinking green tea that tasted of smoke and rain. J laughed as he wiped his face, and I found myself laughing too, not out of relief, but because something inside me had quietly healed. I realized that trust is not about control. It is about choice. You choose to believe that another person will not let you fall, even when they could.

That journey through mud taught me more about leadership than any training or handbook ever could. Trust cannot be forced. It cannot be written into a strategy. It has to be lived. It grows when you show up for one another in uncertainty, when you stand side by side in places where plans collapse and only faith remains.

There is the trust between colleagues, built not on titles or promises but on reliability. It grows in small, ordinary moments, when someone delivers on time, when they cover for you without being asked, when they give credit instead of claiming it. Professional trust is not made by grand gestures; it is shaped by quiet consistency. It says, “you can count on me even when things get hard.” It is one of the most powerful currencies in any workplace because it allows people to focus on purpose rather than protection.

Then there is the trust between managers and their teams, which carries a different kind of responsibility. It is formed through fairness, honesty, and care. This is what allows people to take risks without fear, to fail without humiliation, and to grow without constant surveillance. I have worked with leaders who governed through fear and control, and with others who led through trust. The difference was visible in everything, in the energy of the room, in how people spoke, and in how they showed up. A leader who trusts the team creates space for others to breathe. A team that trusts its leader carries the mission and the vision even when that leader is not in the room.

There is also the trust in friendship, perhaps the most human kind. It is the sacred permission to be seen as you are, without performance or defense. True friendship is not built on constant contact but on the deep knowing that if you reach out, someone will answer. I have lost and gained friends across many borders, and I have learned that the measure of a friend is not how often they appear in your days, but how present they are when you need them. Trust in friendship is not built through perfection but through forgiveness, the quiet understanding that we are all human and still worth loving.

And then there is self-trust, the rarest and most fragile of all. It is the belief that you can meet what comes next with steadiness and courage. It carries you when plans fail and when no one else is there to guide you. Self-trust is built through trial and reflection, through moments when you listened to your intuition and found it was right, and through mistakes that you rose from with honesty and resolve. I lost that trust in myself many times, in the noise of failure, in the confusion of change, and in the silence that follows disappointment. Rebuilding it has been one of the most important parts of my growth, because without self-trust, even the trust of others cannot reach you.

When I think back to that ride with J, I see more than mud and rain. I see the reflection of every relationship that has endured, every mission that has worked, every team that has held together through pressure. They were all built on that same quiet decision to believe in one another.

My friend, trust does not require perfection. It asks for presence. It is built through small consistencies: showing up when you are needed, keeping your word when it is inconvenient, listening with respect, owning your mistakes without excuses. Each act of trust is a quiet investment in shared humanity. It is very important.

I learned to trust again, slowly and deliberately, in colleagues who stepped in when I was overwhelmed, in friends who stayed when I withdrew into silence, in leaders who gave me space to learn and fail without judgment. And, eventually, in myself, that I could find a way forward no matter how uncertain things became.

Now, as the candle burns shorter, its yellow light reflects on the edge of my desk. It flickers slightly, but it holds. I keep watching it, wondering if trust is much the same. It might tremble, it might bend, but if tended with care, it endures.

So, my friend, keep building it. Trust is not blind. It is brave. It takes patience, humility, and time. But once it exists, it becomes the foundation beneath everything worth keeping — work, friendship, leadership, and life itself.

With calm and faith,

Ali Al Mokdad