Listening to: Eva Cassidy
“Sometimes you picture me, I’m walking too far ahead.”
Perspective is a funny thing.
It can be swayed by so many factors -
Tone of voice. Angle of observation.
Where you stood when it happened, how it sounded when you heard it.
Who told it.
How you perceived it when it happened or when you heard it.
Perception itself can be influenced by many memories -
Coloured by old and tattered baggage, prejudices ; old and new.
And let’s not underestimate good old fashioned bitchiness.
So really there’s a whole layer of processing that goes on when you hear a story. The more people’s lips the story has rested on and passed from, the more it would have been flavoured with the individual’s biases, changing the story based on how they would have perceived it.
That is how gossip is born and why it is seldom unsullied.
So is it better to listen to gossip but leave it unspread? Or not to listen to it at all? We all know the famous, “I’ll tell you something, you don’t tell anyone.” Under that passionate veil of secrecy, most “untold secrets” are told quicker than you can say hotcrossbuns.
And how easy is it to listen to gossip about someone and then to forever look at that person and realise your perception about them has changed, even a little? How easily our perception can be altered by one story told under the vow : I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but I’m only telling you, so don’t you tell anyone.
So unlike the buck, where does the gossip stop?
