On Gossip
H ow easy it is to say something wrong. The other day, someone asked me a question and I gave an answer, but after she walked away I thought about what I had said and realized that I hadn’t given her the correct answer. It wasn’t an important question. She was asking it more as small talk than anything else. This particular person picks up the trash where I work, so she speaks to many people throughout the day. Now suppose she repeats what I said. That person will also have the wrong information. That information could spread, simply because I misspoke. We all know that gossip is wrong. We’ve heard that all our lives and yet there are so many people who engage in it. I think what happens is that people don’t see what they are doing as gossip—they’re just repeating information someone else gave them. Of course, we all know that gossip is talking about the personal details of other people’s lives. The danger in gossip isn’t so much that we’re talking about people as much as it is so ea...