In Trust we God.

Everyone needs something. Fish need water. Birds need sky. Dogs need butts to sniff. People need people.

Sometimes the water is dirty. Sometimes the sky is cloudy. Sometimes the butts belong to mannequins, devoid of interesting scent. Sometimes people are assholes.

But people need people.

I am a trusting person. I am one of the most upbeat, positive and optimistic people you will ever meet. I am curious. I always want to see the other side of a thing. I am always thinking. I believe in love.

I have an awesome, but very demanding, job that allows me to talk to and get to know and invest in very interesting, questioning, young men and women in need of a hand-up or a little bit of perspective. I am needed every day. It is a great thing to be needed; to be respected and relied upon.

But one thing about the nature of my job, I run Residence Life for Texas A&M's campus in Galveston, is that I very often get called upon to manage the very best or worst things that happen on this campus. It's a game of minimum's and maximums. It's a series of hills and valleys.

I have my trust violated often, my hopes dashed regularly, and my love goes unrequited as often as not. I tend to live and die with the successes and failures of my students... which means I get hurt a lot.

When I love, I tend to go to the hilt, head over heels, unquestionably on tilt, like Quixote towards his Giants.

Why? Why do we do this? Why did God make me this way?

One of the big questions I hope I get answered in the big "day-after-crossword puzzle-check-to-see-how-many-you-got-right" session with St. Peter or God or Buddha or whomever when I die is "what does God mean when he said he created us in 'his own image'?" Did he make us sentient like him? Did me mean it literally? That there's some really old dude out in space somewhere, white robes and flowing white beard?

I think it makes most sense to look at the common things about us all. And I think the answer is obvious. We all need love. Even God, in his omnipotence and wisdom, wasn't complete without others to love and love him in return.

So maybe my trusting nature is a good thing. Maybe being a Pollyanna ain't so bad.

I trust that I will love. I trust that I will get hurt. I trust that I will have my heart broken. But I also trust that there are some lessons that only experience can teach me. I know that when the skin is cut or a bone is broken, scars form to strengthen the cut and the break, leaving the mend even stronger than it was previously.

So I trust that my heart, when broken, will heal stronger at the break.

When I hear about a student who doesn't like me, I usually just assume its because they really don't know me. I'm a pretty likable guy.

Though I am the only commonality in every failed relationship I've ever had, I've never once felt a break-up was my fault or any kind of judgment on me as a person or a being. It's not that I was too self-centered, or too fat, or too crazy or too Catholic, it was always that I wasn't what the person who passed on me wanted. Just like every time I've dumped someone wasn't because they were bad people. They just weren't what I wanted. And we all need to push for what we want.

Happy people aren't happy because they ended up with the best in show, but because they ended up with someone whose crazy matches their own crazy; whose baggage be it heavy or light, colorful or bland, expensive or cheap, worn or new, matched their own.

I think God has some baggage. I believe his heart is scarred a million times from all the hurt. But he trusts in us, whether we deserve it or not. Maybe that's what love really is.

I've been told I make "Pollyanna look like a sarcastic bitch." But that is something I really love about myself. Maybe being so trusting will wear me down, fade the colors in my soul and dull the point of my whit, til I am naught but the stubby end of a chewed #2 pencil. Or maybe my "you have to be in it, to win it" strategy towards life will pick me the lucky numbers in the lottery of Love and Life.

Either way, I'm going to figure it out.

Trust me.