Stop Gossiping

It seems like a lot of our conversations and a lot of news stories revolve around gossip. We are fascinated with what other people are doing….I’m not sure if it makes us feel better about ourselves or if we are just curious.

I go back to what my Mom used to say…If you can’t say something to someone’s face, then you shouldn’t say it at all!

I find people fascinating, and so I used to spend a fair amount of time talking about people with other people. Of course, I didn’t really do this as a scientific challenge – I was just nosy and curious. If there was some juicy tidbit, I couldn’t wait to talk to my friends about it.

Then one time I was with a bunch of women for a “Mom’s night out” and they began talking about someone who wasn’t there. They started with her kids, moved on to her husband, and then began to rip her to shreds. I became very uncomfortable…I didn’t think it was right to gossip about someone like that. It was hurtful and ugly, and even thought the subject of the gossip didn’t know about it, it felt wrong. At that moment I realized that a lot of the conversations I was involved in centered on gossip…who was getting divorced, whose kids were having problems, whose house could use an update. Ever since that night, I have tried to avoid gossiping.