Victoria S. Hardy

Victoria S. Hardy

Friday, March 02, 2007

Gossip



I have found that the more I learn the less I know and that is not a bad thing. As I watch the TV news and hear rabid opinions that are told as truth, mean and snide comments that are only meant to enrage and not to inform, I shake my head and sigh with contentedness that I don’t know. I see so much arrogance in the world, everyone seems to know-it-all and all subjects are black and white, but I recognize that the truth is often just as tangled and confused as the positions of right and wrong surrounding it. I also see the manipulations in the media and of our leaders as they try to guide us on a path of their choosing and not ours.

I believe that every person in this world is valuable, be they Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jew, Wiccan or Rastafarian. I believe that the soul of a gay person is just as valuable as a straight person, a handicapped person as valuable as one with no discernable disability; a homeless street person is as valuable as the president. The lines of culture and class were created by us, a security blanket to tell ourselves that we are better than those that do not have as much, or believe differently. We are told we cannot judge another, we should not judge another, but we do it without thinking and we spread that judgment with our words, we perpetuate the cycle.

I do not like gossip, I never have, although I have found myself caught up in it in my life, I have discovered, it rarely ends well and most often people are injured. And we have become a country of gossipers, our news headlines are gossip and few people look beyond the announcements to the nuggets of truth that may or may not be there, they hear the gossip and consider themselves informed. We are being distracted by the chaos and the dark energy of gossip and make no mistake; gossip creates a negative and injurious force.

And gossip is a pacifier, it’s far easier to spend time thinking of how others may have done something wrong, than to look inside ourselves and figure out our own dysfunctions. Truth be told, we are all screwed up and we are here, on earth, to fix those things and we make little progress forward when we focus on the perceived mistakes of others. We all know the buzz that grows in our bodies as we settle down into deep and often mean-spirited speculation of another’s misdeeds, we’ve all felt the way our heart races as we share our outrage and self-righteous indignation of another’s words or actions and that energy in our body is real, harmful and draining. But for many of us, it is like our morning coffee, how we start our day on a surge of energy.

Judging other people does not make us grow in the light of God, it does not make us grow in our own eyes, it does not create beauty or positive energy on the earth, it only drains the natural resources of our body, spirit and mind. Until we have walked in the shoes of another, walked the corridors of their mind and emotions; we cannot judge them because we simply do not know.

So as the news headlines scream of Britney, Anna Nicole, Paris and Lindsay we must ask ourselves, what are they not telling us? And as our own minds search for targets among our family, friends and co-workers, we must again ask ourselves, what we are avoiding? I have found a good starting place for discovery is the old saying, “There is something about that person that I don’t like about me.” Once we can begin to understand that it is rarely about the other person and usually about our own feelings, our pains and our angers, only then can we start moving forward.

Peace and Joy