Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Spreading the gossip
By Henrylito D. Tacio
Regarding Henry
CHICKEN Soup for the Teenage Soul featured this story, whose author was unknown:
A woman repeated a bit of gossip about a neighbor. Within a few days the whole community knew the story. The person it concerned was deeply hurt and offended.
Later the woman responsible for spreading the rumor learned that it was completely untrue. She was very sorry and went to a wise old sage to find out what she could do to repair the damage.
"Go to the marketplace," the wise old sage said, "and purchase a chicken, and have it killed. Then on your way home, pluck its feathers and drop them one by one along the road." Although surprised by this advice, the woman did what she was told.
The next day, the wise man told the woman, "Now go and collect all those feathers you dropped yesterday and bring them back to me."
The woman followed the same road, but to her dismay, the wind had blown the feathers all away. After searching for hours, she returned with only three in her hand.
"You see," said the old sage, "it's easy to drop them, but it's impossible to get them back. So it is with gossip. It doesn't take much to spread a rumor, but once you do, you can never completely undo the wrong."
"The most powerful force in the universe is gossip," says Dave Barry, a best-selling American author and Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist who wrote a syndicated column for the The Miami Herald.
Gossip has been with us since time immemorial. The Holy Bible said of it when Psalms 34:12-13 stated: "Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies."
Judaism considers gossip spoken without a constructive purpose (known in Hebrew as lashon hara) as a sin. Speaking negatively about people, even if retailing true facts, counts as sinful, as it demeans the dignity of man -- both the speaker and the subject of the gossip.
Several proverbs have been written about gossip. A Chinese proverb states: "What is told in the ear of a man is often heard 100 miles away. A Spanish proverb contends: "Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you." The Jewish proverb argues: "What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth. An African proverb warns: "Gossiping about the enemy can result in a war."
"Gossip," said George Elliot, "is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker." Edward Wallis Hoch wrote: "There is so much good in the worst of us, / And so much bad in the best of us, / That it hardly behooves any of us / To talk about the rest of us."
Why resort to gossip? American historian George Bancroft offers: "Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement." Novelist Erica Jong adds: "Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed."
French journalist Antoine de Rivarol said that when it comes to gossip, "of every ten persons who talk about you, nine will say something bad, and the tenth will say something good in a bad way."
Sir Winston Churchill disclosed: "There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true."
Hollywood actor Errol Flynn observed: "It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper." After all, "No one gossips about other people's secret virtues," Bertrand Arthur William Russell wrote in 1926's On Education.
Everyone loves to gossip. This is the reason why most newspapers carry a regular column on the subject. In the United States, gossip magazines feature scandalous stories about the personal lives of celebrities.
"Gossip isn't scandal and it's not merely malicious," Phyllis McGinley points out. "It's chatter about the human race by lovers of the same. Gossip is the tool of the poet, the shop-talk of the scientist, and the consolation of the housewife, wit, tycoon and intellectual. It begins in the nursery and ends when speech is past."
"The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them," said Will Rogers. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde quipped: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
Oftentimes, when people gossip, they usually don't reveal the source. If you asked them the source, they will answer, "They Say." Douglas Malloch reminds:
"The biggest liar in the world is They Say."
An unknown author penned this thought-provoking piece on gossip: "My name is Gossip. I have no respect for justice. I maim without killing. I break hearts and ruin lives. I am cunning and malicious and gather strength with age. The more I am quoted, the more I am believed. My victims are helpless. They cannot protect themselves against me because I have no name and no face. To track me down is impossible. The harder you try, the more elusive I become.
"I am nobody's friend. Once I tarnish a reputation, it is never the same. I topple governments and wreck marriages. I ruin careers and cause sleepless nights, heartaches, and indigestion. I make innocent people cry in their pillows. Even my name hisses. I make headlines and headaches."
What did Johann K. Lavater say before? "Never tell evil of a man, if you do not know it for certainty, and if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, 'Why should I tell it?'"
And how to keep a secret from getting known? Listen to the words of Benjamin Franklin: "Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." In his Sand and Foam, Kahlil Gibran noted: "If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees." Are you listening?
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