I’m sitting here with a heavy heart and something popped in my mind that has allowed me to reflect on the act of gossip.
Oxford Languages defines gossip as:
casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details that are not confirmed as being true.
“he became the subject of much local gossip“
A gossip is a person who likes talking about other people’s private lives.
Our choice to gossip says more about us than the person we’re blabbing our mouths about.
As though we don’t have enough on our own plates, running through our own minds, we choose to take time to talk about someone else’s life (past and present). But maybe that’s why we do it, why we choose to gossip— about family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, coworkers, and strangers. We want something and someone else to talk about besides our mess, flaws, fears, insecurities, shortcomings, failures, and incompetencies. A-ha, we aren’t the only ones hiding things, doing silly or ignorant things, making fools of ourselves, or feeling lonely or embarrassed.
Maybe it’s the person who always dishes dirt on others or is conniving and spiteful, and now there’s dirt on them and the temptation is great to throw that dirt everywhere so other people can see this now-exposed person.
Have we been socially conditioned to dish dirt on others, to “spill the tea,” to repost “the receipts, that we’ve grown numb to the reality that we are talking about someone else behind their back, knowing we don’t like it when people do it to us? Most of us are guilty of it. Even when we think it’s harmless chatter, we know we wouldn’t broach the topic directly to the person we’re talking about, and definitely not the same way we’re sharing it with others.
How did the word gossip evolve from its late Old English origins to what we’re doing today? Back then, the word was godsibb, meaning ‘godfather, godmother, baptismal sponsor’, literally ‘a person related to one in God’ to the Middle English view of ‘a close friend, a person with whom one gossips’, hence ‘a person who gossips’, later (early 19th century) ‘idle talk’.
It reminds me of something I heard a pastor, Bryan Crute, say (circa 2009), and I’m paraphrasing, “… It doesn’t even matter if what you’re sharing is true, what matters is that your intent is not to help the person—just talk about their situation. If you aren’t bringing them solutions keep their circumstances out of your mouth.”
Something just hit me — even if they asked you to seek help for them from others, we don’t have the right to share the intimate and vulnerable details of their life with others. Bring the help and let the person who owns the story decide if they want to share it.
We have a lot of growing and maturing to do. We must be better trees, planted in better soil. Our roots are exposed.
~ Natasha
Natasha 