UBC Day 20 // The Challenge of Surviving Gossip

Source: A Proverbs 31 Wife

Challenges are those rocks we meet at some point in our individual paths in life. They are pesky and doubly irritating, but their purpose in our individual creation is that if we survive we learn and we grow.The challenge of fitting into a dress when hips are wider than butt or butt more than hips is found rather simple when hips and butt are in almost perfect symmetry, alas, life never grants anyone such almost-perfection of symmetry in all areas. My biggest and gravest challenge so far has been ‘surviving gossip’. I did tell you here that Gossip is a Teacher and yes, it has taught me a lot of lessons. It has taught me that

1. Yes, you would get to know information about people you didn’t know before. This could be detrimental to your interactions with people or helpful.
2. The information you get via gossip could be true, false, or true, but appended with false strings. Thus it may not be reliable and you will need to seek facts before you judge based on gossip.
3. Gossip or false information may not only be passed via word of mouth but also via false social media impersonation.
4. When you listen to gossip you might find yourself falsely accused of being the orator who had brought up the gossip.
5. When you are indeed the originator of the gossip and it gets eventually traced to you as it is wont to be, it will be a slight on your reputation and we all have heard how a good name is better than silver or gold.
6. The sole purpose of a gossip brought to your table might be to extract your contribution and have your contribution spread in exchange for another person’s contribution in a never ending cycle by the originator of the initial gossip.
7. A little bit of false information / false accusation spread via gossip can cause catastrophic damage within a group.
8. Gossip is a good way to know who is reliable and trustworthy within a group, for secrets can only be kept by those who listen more than they speak about what they’ve heard.
9. The friends who are quick to believe a gossip about you without probing for facts show themselves to be less than close friends.
10. The friends who are quick to release information about you via casual gossip show themselves to be less than close friends.
11. Gossip causes loads of confusion for both speakers and hearers.
12. You could get into trouble for hearing a gossip meant to be tightly guarded information.
13. The motive and intention of passing certain information via gossip is rarely ever pure nor honest.

Keeping in tune with the UBC Day 20 I'm sharing on here the challenge that I faced and have recently made it through. So, have I learned lessons? Grave ones. How did I overcome this challenge?Keeping concrete records of vital information that are true. Being as honest as I could possibly be. Striving to hold on to my core beliefs. Using the opportunity to know close friends better. Giving God time to make things right; in essence, having Faith.And as the good book says that God lets the sun shine on both friend and foe, I’ve learned to continue to greet all with a ‘good morning, good evening’ a ‘hi and hello’.
What challenge have you faced recently and how have you made it through?