My dear Jil, in response to your mail, read the following. Some random creativity though, but you’ll get it: She’s a very pretty woman, very striking in appearance – figure-eightive actually.She combines the facial aesthetic of a Somalian with the adipose deposit configuration of a West African. Those features on another human would have generated negative resonance, but she’s converted them into implements of praise. It’s as if the features, which in themselves would have made one un-beautiful, conspired to make her attractive. If you tweak up Iman – give her a dome of a forehead, but then add a contoured Serena Williams body you’d have her. She wears a thin nose, two wide eyes, a wider smile, a bronze skin and a sincere heart. Her voice is thin in places, tending towards an alto. If you listen closer though you’d hear the scratch of vinyl. And when she smiles, she becomes so young. That smile greatly belies her age, halves it in fact, and then removes some. Etiquette demands you don’t disclose a woman’s age so we’ll keep it between us, and leave the brain guessing. But she’s been wisened by the experiences of life, and the suspicions of life, as well as life’s traumatic exactings. So she lives carefully, so as not to be accused of all the sorts people accuse beautiful widows of. And not just widows, divorcees too, as if anyone prays to be a young widow or a divorcee.
She lives in fear of a vicious animal called PeopleWillTalk. She’s thus forced to live in a self-constructed prison, like a prisoner on house arrest with ankle bracelet. Turns out she’s not the only one who lives in fear of this predator PeopleWillTalk. So many people do. And so they can’t be free, can’t live their lives, can’t socialize…all because PeopleWillTalk. The biological name for PeopleWillTalk is AnimusPredatorMaliciousRex. The scientist who gave that name had himself suffered from malicious gossip in the hands of the Talkers. If you marry a rich husband, they will talk. If you marry a struggling guy, they will talk. If he’s younger than you, they will talk. If he’s much older than you, they will talk. If you go on a dinner date, they will talk. If you stay at home, morose, they will talk. If you break up with your boyfriend, they will talk. If you make up with your boyfriend, they will talk. Since whatever you do won’t stop them from talking, isn’t it wiser to just live and get on with your life? Talkers talk. That’s what they do, they gossip. It titillates their insides. They derive secret joy from malice.
If you allow the talkers, aka gossip, to determine your life you will have a miserable existence and suffer in private. Talkers will always talk. And they often begin with, “Did you know that…” That’s the beginning of evil! In actual fact, they know nothing about what they’re about to say! They just want to recruit what others know. They manufacture facts and stories to fill in the huge potholes in their knowledge. “I even heard that…” is not uncommon. And they’re remorseless. A lot of the gossip is motivated by envy and malice. There’s the story of the man who suffered so much in his marriage he almost died. The wife was psychopathically savage. For over a decade, this man bore the pain in silence, and his health deteriorated until he could bear it no more. He was in and out of hospital. The emotional and mental trauma was much. When he finally did manage to creep out of the marriage the Talkers swung into action, “defending†the vicious wife! They victimized the victim, maliciously trading lies. The oppressed man somehow became the villain. All sorts of stories were fabricated – an ingenious blend of two spoonfuls of facts and four tons of lies and imagination. It was propaganda. The amazing thing is, none of the Talkers knew the facts of the marriage, or cared!
Talkers are vicious. They even attack widows, calling some witches who devoured their husbands. They have no sympathy for human condition, lack empathy. Their wares are traded on the stock market of malevolence. A Talker is essentially a talented gossip and publisher with powers of embellishment and embedment. A gossip will turn the facts of a simple friendship into an affair in seconds. A simple lunch becomes a tryst in a motel. The most ironic of these gossip-talkers are the religious ones. How do you combine faith with wickedness! Their religion teaches them to be merciful yet they tear others down with forked tongues. Their religion teaches them to mind their own business, yet they randomly poke-nose into other people’s lives. Their religion teaches them to show mercy, yet they viciously afflict the obviously wounded, mow them down!
One day, a non-talker got to learn the true story about this man’s marriage. She was shocked at the truth. She discovered that the stories out there were the exact opposite of the truth. She was horrified. Meanwhile the reputation of this victim of a man had been so savaged and assailed that society wondered. But for God. There’s always the story of the moment for gossip…the latest heartache, the latest breakup, the latest divorce… Gossips voyeur on human suffering. There’s disdain for human pain and trauma. Until they suffer the same fate. Life has ways of teaching people not to gossip about others, not to vomit malice on reputational assets. And many times these talkers and gossips are only projecting their own pain onto others. They transmit the pain of their marital trauma to others, punishing their partners by punishing the innocent. Proxy war.
The wisdom of life is, be careful what you say about others. And don’t delight in the suffering and affliction of others. Those who delight in the suffering of others soon confront those same demons or cousins. Life loves to teach lessons. If you don’t know someone don’t spread evil stories about that person, manufacturing lies and trauma. If you’ve never been in someone’s shoes, don’t judge. Who knows if the shoes contain spikes and stones? That someone maintains a facade of tranquility doesn’t mean they’re not going through soul cataclysm. And you can’t judge the facts of a troubled marriage until you’ve heard from the other side. Otherwise it’s prejudice. You shouldn’t even be judging others! How does a sinner sit in judgment over fellow sinners? The amount of energy some procure to unearth the traumatic details in the lives of others can run a factory. And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? Think about that.
