Morning Friend,
Here's a little experiment I've been trying that you might find very enlightening.
I say "trying" because it involves changing one of my festering and long ingrained character defects.
And I say "one" because there are actually several which the self-discovering voice of sobriety has brought to my previously distorted attention.
"Ahh the days of wine and roses and rose-colored glasses!"
"Hmmm."
Yes my friend, it turns out that if you sober up a drunken horse thief, you're still left with a larcenous equestarian.....probably even a more effective one!?
So on this ever evolving list of reasons I'll never sing Mac Davis's "Oh Lord It's Hard To Be Humble" again, ( at least not with same drunken fervor anyway? ), was a fairly easy defect to identify because it involves communication, which in my case is pretty much akin to breathing.
Like my Dad, who'd be impossible to sway from trying to strike up a conversation at a deaf-mutes' convention, I enjoy talking with people.
Probably a great deal more than my bosses appreciate, but thankfully my gregariousness is not a hindrance to my productivity....if anything, it enhances it!
The question becomes, "if you're talking a lot, what are you finding to talk about?".
Of course with me it all starts with the "joke of the day"....( by the way, "what's the difference between the government and the mafia?....one of them is organized.” )...then it's on to sports, current events, the weather, and eventually....gossip.
As to the origin of the word....
Gossip - In merry old England, a godsib was a godparent of either sex, sib being the Anglo-Saxon word for "kinsman." When godsibs were together, particularly female ones, no doubt a fair share of idle talk occurred, and the word soon lost its d and its religious context and acquired the meaning of one with whom one chats intimately.
As to it's contemporary role as part of an organization’s or circle of friends' informational "grape vine", gossip is inevitable.
It is also as tantalizing as it is unreliable and it can be as mean-spirited as it is rampant.
My workplace being no exception, seemed the perfect place for my experiment.
I wanted to know how much NEGATIVITY I was contributing to its' rampant and tantalizingly unreliable network of gossip.
And I did so because of a promise I made to myself in the middle of a dear friend's funeral last year.
"Ginette", the tearful eulogist said, "never had a bad thing to say about ANYONE."
"THIS!", I said to myself was one of this fine lady's innumerable attributes that I could strive for.
If I had nothing "good" to say about someone, then I would change the subject, or shut up.
A "valiant promise" indeed but one which my experiment showed, I'd been breaking badly...."bad-mouthing", "insinuating", "trash-talking" "ridiculing", "nay-saying", and every other bent of "bleak blathering" you can name.
Now the beauty of a self-made promise, if you're sincere about it ( and in my case sober when making it); it's like one you broke with an angry girlfriend only this time she's on speed dial in your BRAIN.
And all the while I'm in the middle of a conversation, there's a familiar ringing in my head ( yes it DOES get quite noisy up there sometimes), that goes off whenever the old compulsion to throw my black hat into the ring arises.
And it reminds me once again that while I wasn't a horse thief in my old life, I sure did a Texas-sized heap of wallowing, reveling and relishing in my and others' misery.
It didn't take too much experimenting to discover how that defect could flourish quite nicely....how new AND improved only happens in advertising.
I got the "new" part....the "improved" comes from just trying to improve daily.....on a conversation to conversation basis.
It's actually turning out to be "fun" addressing this defect, and it's certainly something you can "try at home"!
There are some instances where finding something good to say about someone or something can be considered a great FEAT of imaginative prowess!
And sharing that "find" with positive energy, superfluous sincerity, and heartfelt flourish might well be a masterpiece of performance art!
And your experiment, a rousing success!
love tImMy:/
Laugh as much as you breathe...
Love as long as you live ( hypothesizing)
