BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WHY is it that we all think we have the answers? How is it that when something happens to Tom we reap up all the bad we can find to say, yet when it is the other way around we want people to feel sorry for us?
Is bringing down each other something we find pleasure in? Or is it the fact that we want to seem perfect so we stain other people’s name as much as we can?
How is it that we are so quick to criticise, yet find it so hard to give a decent compliment?
Some of us spend all day bringing down others, yet we never spent an hour doing anything positive to uplift ourselves; bearing in mind I used the word SOME.
The daily sitting on the street corners gossiping is all too familiar: “Oh you ain hear bout she” or “You see he, lord he thief see.” And what about the famous “who a get bit and who a give bit story”?
A young lady, who was a victim of domestic violence due to the power of the tongue, recalled one day when she and her boyfriend were about to leave the house and he got a phone call from a male friend. His friend told him something about her.
She said she could tell by his facial expressions that the person on the phone was not saying anything nice.
When her boyfriend hung up the phone, he asked her about what he was told and immediately started to beat her. He almost choked her to death.
The 27-year-old said all she could have said to herself was, “Look how somebody almost cost me my life because they decided to carry news, not knowing if it were true or false.” She declared that from that moment she vowed to stay away from gossip, whether it is true or not.
Speaking with a number of persons on the issue of gossiping and why they do it, I received some of the same answers. For example, when 24-year-old Keida asked, “Who doesn’t gossip?” “Everybody gossips,” she quickly retorted, adding that she does not really like it.
“I prefer to listen to the news because I do not like saying things about people, whether it is true or not. “Gossiping is just a human thing I guess,” she said.
According to Cinnamon, she does not gossip because half the times the story gets so twisted down the line that it is nothing close to the truth. She said by the time one hears the scoop, it creates nothing but problems for the victim.
I think Gary summed it up best when he said nothing meaningful comes out of gossiping. He strongly feels that the people who an individual gossips with, they ultimately gossip about the same individual. He added that it also means that people are being judgmental, and “we all hate people judging us”.
Gossip is defined as idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others. It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing (unproven) facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and other variations into the information transmitted.
Tongue lashing, gossiping, chatting people, he said, she said, or whatever we may refer to it as, gossiping amounts to nothing but negativity and hatred amongst ourselves. Sadly, we are all at some point guilty of it.
When I was growing up, my goal was always to be more than what my mom was/is. But how can children of today be any better if the parents and older persons who they look up to decide to act like fools and carry-on in idle and senseless behaviour?
We are not here to be the judge of each other but to teach, uplift and elevate ourselves. With that in mind, remember the saying: “Today for me…Tomorrow for you.”
