you can bank on it

You can bank on it.

The idiom suggests that a person can have faith ... that there is a guarantee ... that the same assumptive trust that might be given to a bank can likewise be granted to some other matter. I'll be there on time. You can bank on it.

Sociologically -- i.e. from a comfortingly intellectual distance -- the reasons not to bank on things are rife. Banking on peace, banking on construction, banking on marriage, banking on the stock market, banking on a harvest, banking on a drone, banking on a beamer ... the list goes on an on and allows the observer some bankable comfort: I noticed the dog-shit down-side, therefore I won't get snookered.

But more interesting than the sometimes smug distances of intellectual observations is the degree to which individuals -- read, "me" -- constructs and then trusts and then completely overlooks the fact that that trust has been offered. It seems to be woven into the DNA: There are certain things I can count on and bank on. This is my context and comfort. Without ever saying so, I can bank on the air I breathe, the water I drink, the chair I sit on, the keyboard I use, the oatmeal in the kitchen cupboard.

I can bank on it.

I can hear the Buddhists firing up their Everything-Changes machine in the face of these observations. OK ... it's something else to bank on.

In Cyprus today, the government announced it had hammered out a plan that would, in part, skim selective bank deposits as a means of assuring a loan from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. Imagine the sense of betrayal those depositors might feel. What they -- and even those depositors not directly affected -- faced was a statement that their trust had been misplaced. "You can bank on it" had become "You can't bank on it."

In China, the 16,000 dead pigs taken recently out of one river were joined by some 1,000 dead ducks recovered from another water way. WTF!? Waterways, in my banker's lexicon, are not places where dead pigs and ducks belong. Somehow, what had been an off-the-wall possibility became a reality and in so doing left my unspoken and unacknowledged assumptions with a sense of betrayal. Like a child weeping after a dust-up on some playground, a part of me wails, "It's not fair!" or "It's not the way things were supposed to be!"

But China and Cyprus lie at a comforting distance from my home. Their problems and betrayals are not my own. I can stroke my safely-coiffed beard and observe. Dig my wisdom!

You can bank on it.

My sense this morning is not that banking on things is so much a fool's errand as it is par for the human course. Trying to outflank or outsmart banking on things is just another form of banking. No one wants to be an asshole, but everyone is. And rather than running around like some caterwauling atheist or come-to-Jesus believer, it is better to acknowledge the comfort and 'certainty' that comes from banking on things.

Acknowledge and watch. Not 'watch' with a sense that somehow all the banking might somehow be avoided or pinned down or folded into some universal solvent ... just watch the habit and tendency. Will there be pigs and ducks in the river? Maybe, maybe not. Will earnest promises that anyone might bank on turn unexpectedly sour? Maybe, maybe not. Pessimism and optimism may be comforting, but keeping an eye on things seems to provide the only way I can think of to put betrayal and trust in more realistic context.

Go ahead ... bank on it.

Go ahead ... don't bank on it.

Wriggle and squirm, enfold the scene in rich brocade or slip into a slough of despond ... find as much comfort as you can.

But keep an eye on it.