Zen Stoic Path Show

The Gossip Trap

Jul 28, 2021

08:17

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We’re all guilty of this to some degree. In a world where everyone’s business is all over the internet, the temptation to talk about someone behind their back seems higher than ever. But not just talking behind people’s back, sometimes it's directly too while wielding the mighty keyboard via the comments or DMs.
As we learn more about philosophy and its place in the world, we start to see people and things in our lives differently than we used to. Suddenly what is wrong with our own environment and the people in it becomes much more obvious.
Gossip can be a guilty pleasure or an opportunity for self-reflection. Judgments on the surface seem to be wrong, but they can also be a signal to us! If we are able to catch ourselves in the midst of judging someone else, it can reveal to us something incredibly valuable that we would have never seen otherwise!
The most self-aware people are NOT those who express their knowledge for attention and act the most righteous, but rather those who use their knowledge to self-reflect and become better people.
It’s easy to feel better about ourselves by pointing out the faults in others. Sometimes it makes us feel like by doing so, we move further away from the faults we’re judging. But what if we were using the judgment of others as a defense mechanism? What if it was causing us to be even more disconnected from who we are and how we feel?
“Let philosophy scrape off your own faults, rather than be a way to rail against the faults of others.” -Seneca