Trust But Verify

Our old, reliable minivan had to be taken in for repairs this week. This particular repair has been coming for about a month and finally reached a point of needing immediate action. After an initial assessment at a friend’s shop we believed it was going to be close to a $500 repair. I dropped it off at another mechanic and mentioned to him the suspected issue which he noted, but also said he would do his own investigation before doing any work.

I expected this to take a few days, but was called about an hour later to come pick it up. It ended up not being a major repair, but a simple cracked hose causing all of the problems. If it wasn’t for the willingness of this honest owner to check for himself, we would have ended up with a very expensive bill that still wouldn’t have fixed the problem.

The willingness to check things out for yourself is an admirable and wise quality. Sometimes we adopt what other people say and think without determining whether it’s true. We accept popular opinion or common themes of thinking and neglect to figure out if it fits our value system. I don’t think we need to actively doubt what anyone has to say, but we do need to make sure it aligns with who we are and what we believe. This isn’t a matter of not trusting other people as much as it is a need to verify what we allow to be part of our lives.