Text credit: Sharoon Sunny

Once a church member saw a young woman leave a pastor’s office one morning. Due to the early hour, the older woman church member thought this to be odd since the younger woman was all disheveled. It so happened that the older woman later also heard that the younger woman was divorcing her husband. In her good heart, she had to tell her friends of what she believed to be an early morning transgression. Soon the entire congregation thought that the younger woman and the pastor were having an affair. The older woman found out later that the rumour was false. The younger woman was not leaving her husband and she was suffering from severe depression and had spent the night counselling with the pastor and his wife in his office. It did not matter that the pastor and his wife were trying to help a woman who was desperately in need of help. The reputation of both the younger woman and the pastor could not be salvaged.

The older woman wanted forgiveness and wanted to set right the wrong she did, so she went to the pastor and asked how she could do that. The pastor replied, “I want you to take a feather pillow to the top of a high hill, rip it open and scatter the feathers to the wind. Then find and pick up every feather.”

“That’s impossible,” exclaimed the older woman. “That’s right,” replied the pastor. “That is what happens when you spread rumour. It is impossible to contact and change the opinion of every person who heard it.”

Gossip is incredible to indulge in but has far-reaching consequences and can dangerously damage relationships. There is a steadfast belief that women help, nurture, support and build their closest allies — other women. We find friends and take comfort in knowing there are like-minded women who understand us. Most of us make it a point to surround ourselves with women who love and respect themselves incredibly because this love translates to how they love and respect women around them. Strength builds strength.

Everything has a history, and in the case of hearsay, there is an interesting one as well. The English word ‘gossip’ originated as “godsibb,” referring to a godparent. Because godmothers often assisted with the birth of a child or were present in all-female settings, the word became understood as women who talked frequently. It wasn’t until after the 16th century that gossip denoted something other than friendship.

Gossip is endless and exciting. Take the example of celebrity gossip –glossy, glamorous and smutty. Media channels want to sell, so they build and burn. People know it to be false yet indulge in it forgetting celebrities to be people. We quickly make paper dolls out of them. But who cares. They are rich, and our slander or gossip will not hurt them. Not true! What is wrong with gossiping? It hurts. It hurts the one who indulges in it the most.

For an outsider, the one who gossips looks bad. People distance themselves from gossipers because it eventually breeds negative energy. Remember your friends are a minuscule circle, and there is a larger social circle that matters. Life plays out in strange ways. The person who shied away from being your friend because of what you were indulging in, might be the one who could potentially help you find a job or help you build an outstanding network for your next project, and if you portray yourself as someone who cannot handle life with maturity, then bridges that could be fostered will only be burned.

Slander breeds negativity which eats into you and corrodes. It settles down like dust, quietly. Stanford research shows how negativity increases cortisol levels and impacts how the brain processes information. It physically peels away neurons from the hippocampus and shrinks it. Cortisol builds and interferes with the body’s mechanism to process things. The heaviness settles in and dramatically displays itself for you to see. Words are powerful tools. As innocent as it seems, when you hurt or malign someone, you will it for yourself in return.

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