Nov 9, 2022
Gossiping destroys you
One of my pet peeves is gossiping. Engaging in small talk, and discussing the lives of others, annoys me. For me, we should be talking about something else — about big ideas and how we can change the world for the better.
Yes, gossiping can be fun. However, gossiping does not only destroy the subject’s reputation but it destroys your spirit more. Here’s why.
An interesting article written by Girish Borkar discussed how harmful gossiping is to your spirit.
“It is human nature to talk about others, try to find out what is happening with so and so, whether any affair is going on, whether the person is on drugs, drinking, having [a] bad company, etc. This has happened to all of us and some of us indulge in this kind of gossip even today — for entertainment purposes or whatever reason,” Borkar said in his article published in 2021.
Borkar is right: Gossiping is a kind of addiction, something that we should get rid of. The more that we engage in these “small” talks, poking into the lives of others, the more we are getting trapped in spreading lies and destroying the lives of others. It is a sin, a bad karma, an evildoing.
Because of this, St. Paul warned the early Christians about engaging in gossip:
“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers,” St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians.
He even forewarned the spiritually adept in Corinth about the effect of gossiping about their salvation:
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers… nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6: 9–10, KJV)
The evil of gossiping is not exclusive to Christians. Even Hindus are prohibited from participating in slandering or gossiping.
In an article published in 2018 in the newspaper The Hindu, it says that gossip is a demon itself that we should avoid, at all costs.
Meanwhile, in Buddhism, the Enlightened One also taught his disciples about the importance of the Right Speech, which includes avoidance of lying, gossiping, hurting others through words, and idle chattering.
Whenever we gossip, we are poisoning the power of the word, thus causing the death of both the trust of the person who is the subject of the gossip and our spirit as we are engaging in something evil.
