Ah, human nature. We savor the drama, the salacious gossip. The more horrible the situation, the more we can't wait to tell our close friends. This sort of thing is so prevalent there is an entire cable channel devoted to it, and a billion dollar industry that compensates people handsomely for invading celebrity privacy. As my husband so eloquently put it, "we like watching people mess up."
I don't want to be like this anymore.
I started watching E! on a regular basis when Elise was a tiny baby, because I was up all hours nursing her and sometimes the only thing besides infomercials on at 4am was a True Hollywood Story or Entertainment News. I got sucked in. More recently, I've caught headlines about the family with 8 children who are splitting up. I keep thinking to myself, this is a real-life family we are talking about here! 8 children are now growing up in a broken home. It disgusts me that this is selling magazines and advertising slots.
I had my own share of drama recently, which has prompted me to re-evaluate whether or not I'm a disgusting person who thrives on other people's heartache and misfortune.
I don't think I am. I hear of unfortunate things, and my heart instantly goes out to that person. But, then I am first in line to tell whichever friend I happen to run into next.
Why do we(I) do this? Is it to discreetly pat ourselves on the back for managing to avoid a similar situation ourselves, because of our wise choices and clean living? I imagine I was the topic of much scandalous gossip a couple of years ago, when, within the course of a single year, I went from being desperately unhappy in a failing marriage to divorced to dating a younger man to pregnant to re-married. Juicy stuff! I grew tired of everyone knowing my business without me having the pleasure of sharing it with them myself, because after all--the juiciness of my situation were the greatest joys of my life (Elise! Danny!)
At any rate: I want to be a good friend. I want to build people up, to be someone people feel like they can trust. With a secret or anything. The fact that people think I was the source of some ugly gossip hurts me more than being the topic of ugly gossip. (It wasn't me! If you don't want people to speculate about the things you are doing, don't do visibly questionable things!) I hope this blows over without any permanent damage.
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1- Thank you for your sweet comments on my blog.
ReplyDelete2- As a friend of mine used to say, while we think others might be talking behind our backs and distorting who we truly are, we forget that they are probably already focusing their gossip on someone else.
3- When we gossip (this is a tough one, but we sometimes need the reminder), the only real information we contribute is a demonstration of our smallness. It overshadows our greatness and qualities like a giant mushroom of smoke after an explosion, and it is avoidable.
4- I think you are right. We do this as an attempt to demonstrate our value by comparing to others' perceived failures. It is a hell of a detour and it does not work.
5- You are NOT a bad person and you ARE a good friend. A bad friend or bad person would not have the guts to openly explore this topic and review their own actions.
6- A good booster: America or Britain's Got Talent. Real, ordinary people who go out on a limb in a moment of personal truth. Beats any gossip show and far more uplifting.
7- A good therapy: Watching clips of those shows online now and then, as a reminder of the vulnerability and dreams we all share.
8- Now what do we talk about?