\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was doing my four mile walk with\u00a0my ear buds in, listening to a book on tape. The author was a woman whom I\u00a0consider my coach and spiritual teacher, Pema Chodron, and she was talking\u00a0about gossip. In her usual humble way, she was using her own life as an
example. I don\u2019t recall the details, they didn\u2019t stay with me, but the lesson did.<\/p>\n
It went something like this:Before Pema became a Buddhist, when
she was still known as Deirdre Bloomfield, she had an apartment and a roommate.\u00a0I don\u2019t where she was living at the time, but they each had a bedroom and\u00a0they\u2019d meet in the morning in the kitchen for breakfast. They had a mutual\u00a0friend and Deirdre and her roommate talked about her a lot. Not in a positive\u00a0way. They seemed to enjoy saying negative things about her and they bonded over
their shared gossip.<\/p>\n
It went on for a long time, they\u00a0got a twisted kind of satisfaction from it, but one day Deirdre noticed she was\u00a0feeling uncomfortable. The next morning at breakfast, she said to her friend, \u201cWe\u00a0have to stop this. We\u2019re being mean and it doesn\u2019t feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel exactly the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n
When they discussed the situation,\u00a0they realized that the person about whom they were talking didn\u2019t feel badly\u00a0because she didn\u2019t know they were doing it. They were the ones who felt badly.\u00a0They were closing their hearts, thinking negatively and taking that out into
the world.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a false sense of unity when\u00a0you get together with a friend and start ragging on someone else. It\u2019s a weird\u00a0kind of gratification, as if you both have a secret that you\u2019re better than someone\u00a0else is. But you\u2019re not. We are all the same. When Buddhists talk about the
suffering of all sentient beings, I see that we all suffer in our individual\u00a0ways but we all feel the same things. Fear. Anger. Disappointment. So why
should we take someone down and make it worse? People are having enough trouble\u00a0in the world. There\u2019s too much attacking and abasing. There\u2019s too much finding\u00a0fault with each other. Let\u2019s just give one another other a break.<\/p>\n
When you gossip, you\u2019re causing\u00a0harm, mostly to yourself. Putting negative thoughts into the world creates a\u00a0blockage in your communication. Putting positive thoughts into the world helps everyone\u00a0heal. Bonding over something that can heal a situation is much more powerful\u00a0and wise than making someone else wrong. It would be kinder and a lot more\u00a0creative to have compassion. It would be helpful to talk about something that\u00a0happened to you that you\u2019d like to figure out. Or to support someone during a\u00a0challenge in their lives.<\/p>\n
I was driving to the grocery store,\u00a0idling at the stop light, ready to take a left turn. The red light turned to\u00a0yellow and I waited for the intersection to clear. Just when I about to make my\u00a0turn, a car speeded up and took the turn in front of me. By the time the
intersection was clear, the light had turned to red and I turned as quickly as\u00a0I could, stopping traffic. I was irate. Later, I told my friend about the idiot who had turned in front of me. But as I told the story, I realized that\u00a0sometimes I did the same thing. Did that make me an idiot? By my definition, it\u00a0did.<\/p>\n
The same thing happens when you\u2019re\u00a0putting someone down. Throwing shade as they call it these days. Did you see\u00a0the ugly dress she was wearing? Can you believe what she just said? She\u2019s so\u00a0overweight. Why doesn\u2019t she go on a diet? Did you see the weird thing she does\u00a0with her mouth when she talks? We all have our eccentricities and I\u2019ve seen\u00a0that when someone judges someone else, they\u2019re talking about themselves. If\u00a0someone is doing something that bothers you, the only decent thing to do is to
look at yourself and take responsibility for your thoughts. You wouldn\u2019t have\u00a0noticed it if you didn\u2019t do it yourself. Why is it troubling you and what can\u00a0you do to be more loving?<\/p>\n
Gossiping is like yelling at\u00a0someone behind their back. It\u2019s like sending a text using all capital letters and\u00a0never speaking to the other person. The late Beatle, George Harrison said,\u00a0\u201cGossip is the devil\u2019s radio.\u201d If there\u2019s something you want to say and you\u00a0feel the need to keep it a secret, if you don\u2019t want someone to hear it, don\u2019t
say it. Often, when you\u2019re judging someone else for doing this or that, you\u2019re\u00a0angry at them for another reason that you don\u2019t want to address. It\u2019s easier to\u00a0say negative things about them than talk about your own frailties.<\/p>\n
When I\u2019m about to talk about anyone,\u00a0I ask myself what my intention is. There\u2019s a difference between gossiping and\u00a0venting. Sometimes its hard to tell the difference. Gossiping is blaming.\u00a0Venting is taking responsibility for your feelings. If your intention is to make\u00a0fun of someone else, it\u2019s gossiping. If your intention is to unburden your
heart without aiming vitriol at someone else, that\u2019s venting. More venting and\u00a0less gossiping is a goal to keep in mind when you\u2019re troubled by someone and\u00a0you need to understand why.<\/p>\n
It’s the simple saying about do\u00a0unto others. If you don\u2019t want other people to talk about you behind your back,\u00a0stop talking about them. Remember the adage: If you don\u2019t have anything nice to\u00a0say, don\u2019t say anything at all. Stop focusing on people\u2019s weaknesses and start
noticing their strengths. Before you express a negative opinion, think about\u00a0how it would feel if someone said that about you.<\/p>\n
Actress Kirsten Dunst says, \u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t gossip about myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 I was doing my four mile walk with\u00a0my ear buds in, listening to a book on tape. The author was a woman whom I\u00a0consider my coach and spiritual teacher, Pema Chodron, and she was talking\u00a0about gossip. In her usual humble way, she was using her own life as anexample. I don\u2019t recall the details, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2550,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/2550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}