Ya know what really bugs me? I mean, really deep down bothers the hell outa me?  Negative chatter about someone else. I guess it’s called gossip most of the time, but I’m talking about something more cynical, something dark and manipulative. I’m talking about the intentional chatter about someone in order to make yourself look better or make sure that the one you’re talking to thinks less of the one you’re talking about and lands on your ‘side’ or your ‘team’.  It’s the conscious thought and follow through of demeaning someone’s character.

I don’t want to get preachy, and I’m sure there is someone out there that could call me out as having done this at some point in my life, but with age brings clarity and it just makes me nauseous when I find out that a parent tells stories to their children about their other parent in order to ‘keep’ the kids to themselves. It makes me sick to see grown adults need to have their children side with them and in order to make that happen, they have to tell stories, real or not, that makes the other look less.  Or how about so called friends who need to share intimate details of a friends life in order to make sure all the others in the circle ‘side’ with her. Why do people do this?

Why do some people feel like people are commodities and the more they gather around themselves the more they win at this sick game they play? What you will not read in this blog is the cliché that they are the losers in life. That those who gossip always end up with nothing. Because that is simply not true. For every person wanting to tell a bullshit story there are those who want to hear it. So, they are not the biggest loser.

The biggest losers are those who are denied relationship with someone because of what the gossiper has said. They are the ones who lose. They lose the opportunity to have what may have been the most beautiful relationship on the planet. If it’s a child, they may lose the gift of knowing that parent, learning their heritage, understanding where they came from. If it’s a friendship it may have become the one that stories are wrote about.  Because the easy thing to do is to simply believe what someone tells you. The easy thing to do is listen and act or don’t act on the false information you were fed. By contrast, the thing each of us should do is decide on our own who we are, and who the people we choose to meet, and love and associate with are. What a horrible thing to do to another human being. To deny them relationship with someone amazing, because the only way you can validate yourself is by tearing someone else down.

How about we think before speaking? It’s an admirable trait. Even more admirable though is the ability to filter what we hear and decide on our own who people are. I for one am tired of watching people lose amazing and wonderful relationships simply because someone else felt the need to make sure people were on their ‘side’ or their ‘team’ because they are too insecure to make and keep people around them on their own merits. What a sad and pathetic form of insecurity and the biggest losers are the ones who don’t even know what they are missing.