学进去

I was driving from Harrisburg last night, a distance of about eighty miles. It was late. Several times I got stuck behind a slow-moving truck on a narrow road with a solid white line on my left, and I was clinching(紧握) my fists with impatience.

At one point along an open highway, I came to a crossing with a traffic light. I was alone on the road by now, but as I approached the light, it turned red and I braked to stop. I looked left, right and behind me. Nothing. Not a car, no suggestion of headlights, but there I sat, waiting for the light to change, the only human being for at least a mile in any direction.

I started wondering why I refused to run the light. I was not afraid of being arrested, because there were clearly no police around, and there certainly would have been no danger in going through it.

Much later that night, the question of why I'd stopped for that light came back to me. I think I stopped because it's part of an agreement we have with each other.It's not only the law, but it's an agreement we have, and we trust each other to honor it: we don't go through red lights.

It's amazing that we ever trust each other to do the right thing, isn't it? And we do. Trust is our first tendency. We have to make a deliberate decision to mistrust someone or to be suspicious or skeptical. Those attitudes don't come naturally to us.

It's a very good thing too，because the whole structure of our society depends on mutual trust, not distrust. This whole thing around us would fall apart if we didn't trust each other most of the time. We do what we say we'll do; we show up when we say we'll show up；we deliver when we say we'll deliver; and we pay when we say we'll pay. We trust each other in these matters, and when we don't do what we've promised, it's far from the normal. It happens often that we don't act in good faith and in a trustworthy manner, but we still consider it unusual, and we're angry or disappointed with those badly-behaved people. Anyway I was so proud of myself for stopping for the red light that night.