I consider myself very trusting…possibly to a fault. Some might call me gullible.
Maybe this is because of the high degree of trust I try to achieve in God, in “destiny,” in things working out they way they are supposed to, in a Divine Hand in life. And I like to trust people, too, to see the good in them rather than the bad.
However, this week my trusting nature was called into question. Or maybe it was put to the test. And I really didn’t like it at all. And it made me question my ability to judge a situation or a person’s intent, which made me very uncomfortable. Plus, I really hated not trusting another person. I felt almost guilty for feeling that way, although I might have had good reason.
You see, I’ve been trying to find an apartment in New York City to sublet or rent for seven weeks this summer while my son attends the American Ballet Theatre summer intensive. (He auditioned in San Francisco and was accepted with a scholarship. I just have to brag a little…) This, however, meant him giving up his last summer at Jewish camp, much to his real dismay, and me giving up going to the Aleph Kallah (much to my dismay) so I could chaperon him in New York. All this to say that finding an apartment in Manhattan when you live in California is not so easy…especially when you are on a budget.
The budget part meant that we were looking for the cheapest apartment possible. We found a pretty decently priced apartment being sublet by a lovely women, and we thought we might take that. However, we were also looking at several other apartments that were much cheaper. Surprisingly cheap, actually. And these low prices eventually caused my husband and I to question whether or not the whole deal was a scam to take our money and run. We had visions of my son and I arriving in New York having paid for an apartment but with no apartment waiting for us.
With one “landlord” in particular, I spent several days and many hours trying to verify who he was and if he was reputable. He gave me references who wrote back to me using the same broken English he did. When I asked if I could send a friend to see the apartment, he said he was going to Hawaii and didn’t like all my questions. Hmmm.
That caused me to wonder about another landlord who refused to tell me anything else about herself other than that she owned the unit she was renting. She might have been fine – upright, legitimate, honest, but I seriously considered if she was just the opposite. I began to think taking her apartment, which was extremely convenient as well as cheap, was a big mistake as well.
All the while my mistrust grew. And I felt worse and worse.
Needless to say, I’ve decided to rent the more expensive apartment with the woman I can find on LinkedIn and who has been open and forthcoming with me about herself and her apartment. But the whole experience made me really wonder about what seems to be a fine line between trusting and not trusting.
It doesn’t feel good not to trust, yet you must have some degree of, lets say, discernment about people, especially in business dealings. Yet, seeing the good in people brings out the good in people, I believe.
And trust is imperative in manifesting what you want in your life. You must trust that it is coming to you already. And if it doesn’t arrive, you must trust that there is a good reason that it hasn’t; you must trust that something better is on its way instead.
And I feel you must trust that God has a hand in your life, otherwise it might feel too difficult to deal with some of the things that happen. I believe that trusting it is all working out for the best is the most elegant, if you way, way to get through life.
And maybe that’s why I took the apartment with this woman as well. Everything seemed to point towards subletting from her. The other deals felt shady. My intuition said, “You thought her place was perfect. Trust that it is.”
And she’s a musician and involved in theater. A good connection, I think…My daughter wants to work in the theater business as a costume designer. And her apartment is in the Village. No view of the New York skyline, but seven weeks of living in the heart of the artsy fartsy part of Manhattan – just where I belong with all the other writers. (And she talked about sitting in a particular chair in her apartment by a window and writing. How much nicer will that be for me than in some high-rise building, right?) And instead of a cold apartment with no homey touches, we’ll have her actual home opened to us. What really could be better?
So, I’m trusting. And I’m trusting that my intuition was right about the other so-called landlords as well. Maybe that’s less about mistrusting them than it is about trusting my gut instincts, my intuition. And there’s the lesson. We must also trust our intuition. More often than not, we know…We just have to trust that we know.
