Who do you trust?

I don’t know if there are still daredevils around. I do know there is a Marvel character called Daredevil (“real” name Matt Murdock), and I even know Daredevil: Born Again will air on Disney+ sometime in 2025.

What I’m wondering about is people like Evel Knievel and Karl Wallenda and Philippe Petit. In case you don’t know any of those, they all performed feats of daring for public entertainment. Of the three, Knievel is the best known and Petit is the most recent. He’s also the only one still living.

Knievel is remembered primarily for jumping motorcycles over long distances. There was a lot of talk about the Grand Canyon, but that never happened. And he failed to jump the fountains at Caesar’s Palace, but he tried. He was badly injured in that one. Along the way he did break a lot of records, and also a lot of bones. But he was the real deal.

In 1974, at the age of 25 or so, Philippe Petit walked on a wire between The World Trade Center twin towers. Everything about that feat was incredible, including the fact of getting the wire installed 1,350 feet above the ground.

A documentary made in 2008 about his performance won an Oscar, so you know the story is great. He had the idea when he was just 18 and happened to see an article about the building of the towers. He finished the show in the rain.

Karl Wallenda was also a high-wire artist. At 65, Wallenda walked on a wire 1/4 mile across Tallulah Gorge in Georgia. He did two headstands along the way.

A thrill ride

But the rope walker daredevil of them all, in many ways, was Charles Blondin. He was the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tight rope, which he did on June 30, 1859. He did it again on July 4 (Independence Day) and on July 14 (Bastille Day — Blondin was in fact Frenchman Jean-François Gravelet).

Blondin continued to cross the 1,100 foot distance on the 3.24 inch rope, 100 feet above the water over the next several weeks. He did it blindfolded, on stilts, and once while pushing a wheelbarrow carrying a stove. That time he stopped in the middle and cooked an omelet, ate it, and continued on.

In the greatest crossing, though, he carried a man on his back.

He offered a reward for anyone who would ride with him. No one took it. Blondin’s manager and best friend did.

The crossing was anything but easy. Each man weighed 140 pounds. The balancing pole weighed 45 pounds. It was very hard work. But obviously they made it, or Blondin would be far less famous. (Here’s a good 7 1/2 minute video about it.)

There are several important lessons in all this, but the one I’d like us to focus on is trust.

All those people, even for a reward, would not trust Charles Blondin with their life. Did they believe he could carry them safely across? Many probably did, but their trust did not overcome their fear.

Would I have hopped on his back? Would you? “Who do you trust” suddenly becomes a serious question.

The lesson. And the other part of it.

There are several videos about Charles Blondin carrying Harry Colcord (that was his name) on his back across the falls. The lesson that is almost always taken from that — and it is a good one — is, “Who do you trust to carry you across?”

That might be across the falls, across the finish line, or across the chasm from earth to heaven.

We trust other people (to some degree) every time we get on the road with them. We trust barbers, butchers, and bankers. Of course we trust doctors and nurses and police officers. That last group we might trust with our lives, as we do airline pilots and the mechanics who inspected the plane.

But that is only part of the lesson. The other part of the lesson is this: Who trusts you?

Only Harry Colcord trusted Charles Blondin. But Charles also trusted Harry. It took a mutual trust for that walk to work. Blondin told his passenger, “Don’t try to balance, and keep looking up.”

All of us are well versed in trusting others. We practice it a lot, generally without giving it much thought.

But who trusts you? How do you make yourself trustworthy, and how often do you offer to carry someone on your back over a dangerous path?

To begin with a simple question, are you trustworthy?

Entrust

Sometimes I describe myself as a “geek wannabe.”

I worked in a high-tech company for several years, and I loved living in geekdom. So I kind of still pay attention to technology, especially in networking.

Recently I noticed an article that said Google and Firefox would no longer trust Entrust. What does that mean? Entrust is one of many companies that make software which is supposed to make web sites (in particular) and other internet communications secure. Part of that is called SSL/TLS. If a website address begins with https as opposed to http, it is secured through an SSL certificate.

The Entrust name implies that they should be trusted. Now they are not.

Neither naming yourself Entrust nor saying, “Trust me!” makes you trustworthy. So what does?

In some cases trust is about ability. The tightrope walker, for instance, or a hair stylist or a chef. Sometimes it is about strength. But most of the time trust is about honesty and reliability.

If you want to be trustworthy, tell the truth.

Condoleezza Rice said in a talk to the Global Leadership Summit that trust was the essential character trait for a leader. She said no one will follow you very far unless you have their trust.

Then she said, “Once you lose that trust, it is almost impossible to get it back.”

Politicians, “slick” business people, and even preachers have been known to violate our trust. (See Eric Adams.)

But we should still be trusting people, because the bad actors are the exception.

Most of all, we should be trustworthy. Trust me, that is a great way to do good.