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The World is shrinking and soon the whole globe will be reduced to the size of a tiny village. Where before, people would whisper behind closed doors or paper thin walls about some juicy updates about their neighbors’ lives, meticulously dissect the problems of relatives or friends and share their “2 cents” of profound opinions, today these same whispers can now span the whole globe traveling over fiber-optic cables, communications satellites and even cyberspace.
If Alexander Bell had an inkling of how his little telephone would one day revolutionize gossip, giving it not just supersonic wings but relativistic ones, opening the path to a worldwide wildfire of petty inter-family quarrels and squabbling, squandering precious resources for generations to come because people just had to know what is happening to other people’s lives, I wonder.. Would he have done the decent thing and commit hara-kiri?
My father gave me one of the life changing perspectives on this topic while we stood fascinated watching my mother launched a gossip counter attack aimed at a relative halfway across the world. He said “imagine the amount of resources being devoted to this type of endeavor worldwide”. Wow! And to think I thought world wars, unchecked industrialization and Global Warming were the big issues here! Come to think of it, aren’t TV shows like “The Buzz”, “Oprah”, “American Idol”, “Survivor”, and others just manifestations of people’s desire to know about something they have no business thinking about?
What do we get from gossip anyways? Aside from being an entertaining activity to pass the time, is there something about gossip that compels people to stretch out their necks over the chopping block just so they could give out their “2 cents” for free? One of my favorite authors, Tom Clancy, had something very interesting to say about this subject. He said that people’s opinions are like ass holes (rectum), everybody has them, yet not everybody wants to see them. I wonder then what prompted certain people I know to give other people a glimpse of what their “ass holes” look like? Here are some examples:
1. A few days ago, my mother had to call one of our US-based relatives, who hates to be disturbed by phone calls at night, because of an emergency regarding my Uncle who was at the hospital at that time. As expected, this certain relative got irritated and a few sparks went off. Days after, we heard talk that this relative was telling our other pinsans (halfway across the globe) how irritated she was that she had to take that late night call.
Whoa! Are medical emergencies not a valid reason for calling then? I know that a human life is worth much more than money but apparently we didn’t know that sleep is much more important than life. Moreover, not getting enough sleep is apparently bigger news, one that is worthy of IDD long distance calls, than a life and death situation over at the ER. Well, now we know better than to put life on a pedestal when it comes her.
2. I just found out that apparently our manila (relatively newcomer) neighbors (relatives of the owner) are more concerned about our lives than theirs. Where we sleep, what our job nature is, why we crap the way we do, etc, etc, etc. They were not too shy of us overhearing them too, “mas mabuti nang alam nila” were the exact words they practically shouted out their window. Which was quite surprising since this was the first time I’ve ever heard of something like this in our compound – after all, all our previous neighbors got along pretty well in the past by practicing the Japanese art of “watching the rocks grow” or minding their own businesses and lives.
I got so perplexed that I asked my housemate, “did I miss something here or is this just a manifestation of neighbourly love?” “is there a new government NGO formed along the principles of bantay-bata, bantay kalinga and bantay-boto? BANTAY-KAPITABAHAY perhaps? Or were they just missing the Pinoy Big Brother Show they were so fond of talking about before they turned their inquisitive eyes and ears on us?
I wondered then that since they were so concerned about us, maybe it was just right that me and my housemate start concerning ourselves with their lives and their problems. And so thinking along the lines of the golden rule, we began to talk about the livelihoods of our “concerned neighbors”, are their salaries beyond the minimum wage?, were they paying rent?, were they intelligent enough to land a better job, what their chances of going out of the country are, why there are always guys going in and out of their house, etc etc.
It was quite fascinating really as my housemate could literally hear their labored breathing behind the dividing walls as they strained to hear every word of what we say. There were some whispered comments and indignant muffled squeaks too, whenever they hear something they don’t particularly agree to. After a while, it became obvious that they didn’t particularly enjoy listening to others dissect their personal lives. “palayasin na natin/ let’s kick them out of the compound”, “sumbong natin kay lola/ let’s tell our grandma (owner) about them”, “ano banatan na natin?/ lets teach them a lesson” were the words that soon boomed out of the “neighborly love” PA system.
Now I’m confused.. he he, perhaps Alexander Pope had it right when he said “
“One who is too wise an observer of the business of others, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.”
3. Finally, after months of circulation, it seems that the gossip that my sister was “pregnant” is dying down. Why? Because the truth finally clashed head to head with the gossip and no matter how juicy the scandal of someone getting pregnant is, it just wouldn’t stand if the “subject” agrees to undergo a pregnancy test.
This is quite funny really, considering that the whole circus happened in the nursing department of Naga College Foundation. The building is full of freaking medical students and instructors for God’s sake! These are people who should know better than to make a diagnosis based on gossip rather than scientifically proven medical procedures and tests. If these are the kind of nurses we send abroad, then God help the American, European or Australian women who’ll find themselves on an operating table with their bellies split wide open and ready for a c-section just because they “look” pregnant.
After all, if the issue was important enough, wouldn’t it have been easier and kinder to settle it with a 3-minute pregnancy kit than a 3-month long remotely conducted diagnostic procedure which the “patient” didn’t even know about? (I’ve never seen this one done in Dr. House though so maybe it’s too cutting edge for the show). Well here’s a medical diagnosis for the “voodoo nurses” like them “Gossip is sometimes referred to as halitosis of the mind”
People never seem to get that what they say about other people tells the listener more about them than about the subject. Not only that, by concerning ourselves more with other people’s lives, we may completely miss ours until all that’s left are shattered relationships and regrets. Is it really that much harder to work together than against each other? Or is it just much easier to concentrate on the smaller and less important things than the ones we really need to work on to better our lives?
The world is indeed getting smaller. Are our minds doing the same too? Of all the species in this earth, it is only us humans that have the capacity to become much more than what we were designed by nature to be. We can spread across the stars and eliminate the risk of being obliterated by a single asteroid. Leave a better world for our children. Find the answers to some of life’s most profound questions and many more.
Will gossip and small minds continue to keep us from finally synergizing and doom us to eventual extinction? He he, this is one theory yet to be discussed in Discovery Channel’s “End of the world” scenarios.
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