An old proverb tells the story of a person who repeated gossip – some rumor about a neighbor.
Soon, the whole community had heard the rumor.
Later, the person who spread the gossip learned that the rumor was untrue.
The person was very sorry and went to an elder in the community who had a reputation for great wisdom to seek advice.
The elder told the person, “Go to your home and take a feather pillow outside. Rip it open and scatter the feathers, then return to me tomorrow.”
The person did as the elder had instructed.
The next day, the person visited the elder.
The elder said, “Go and collect the feathers you scattered yesterday and bring them back to me.”
The person went home and searched for the feathers, but the wind had carried them all away.
The person returned to the elder and said, “I could find none of the feathers I scattered yesterday.”
“You see,” said the elder, “it‘s easy to scatter the feathers but impossible to get them back.”
So it is with gossip; it doesn‘t take much to spread hurtful words, but once you do, you can never completely undo the damage.
– via Joshua Becker’s new book Inside Out Simplicity.
In this age of instant communication, instant story telling, instant propaganda…
Where a person’s career can be destroyed by a one-minute clip edited from a 45-minute speech…
As Insurgents of Love…
May our words be gracious.
May we blog, tweet and speak with love.
May we watch what we say about others and learn to replace criticism and negativity with encouragement and positivity.
Hi there,
Thank you for for using my photograph in this post!
Please attribute the photograph to Online Photography School and link to http://www.photographyicon.com/
I have a little note about people using my images here:
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Thank you so much!
Sure thing!
Thanks for making your photo available through Creative Commons.