Rumour has it.

We have all gossiped or have been gossiped about in our lives. I’m no saint when it comes down to this human trait.

However, I do like to think I’ve matured enough to recognize when speaking of someone else can hurt them, rather than display honest concern over someone’s health and happiness. Learning of a friend’s divorce from someone is one thing. Spreading slander about why they are getting divorced is much different.

A group of people in my life, myself included, have recently been the target of someone’s malicious energy. This person decided to tell a whole lot of folks in our community a big pile of bullshit about us. It spread like wildfire throughout our little town.

I needn’t go into the details. Suffice it to say, what she said about us wasn’t true.

At first, I wanted to confront the person. Get all up in her kitchen, so to speak. My inner redneck ached to throw a punch. But I let some time go by, and realized that letting it go is the best possible scenario, only because no matter what I say and how I say it, she will twist it to suit her own purposes of playing the eternal victim. And also, I deeply believe in Karma.

As she carries on in her own life, holding her hatred close to her heart, it only truly destroys her. The ones who matter in my life know who I am and know that what was said are lies. These aren’t the first lies she has told about me and others. I suspect they won’t be the last.

Once my temperament cooled, I truly felt nothing more than pity in my heart for her. Burn enough bridges in your community and you will have nowhere to go.

This has served a teaching purpose in my own journey. I’ve learned a little bit more about restraint and reflection. Patience and I have become a bit closer. I’ve chatted to my inner redneck and successfully calmed her down with a glass of wine (or two). And along the way, my compassion for this lost and bitter soul grew just a little bit. Perhaps, I hope, one day she will see the wrong in what she did. Perhaps she can heal her inner wounds; that twisted mechanism of her own reality that has skewed her view of things.

Or perhaps she never will. But that is not my job to see to. It isn’t my concern. It never has been. I only need to see to myself and my own true path.

It brought me closer to my friends who have born the brunt of this too.

My Mom always said: “Those who mind don’t matter. Those who matter don’t mind.”

 

Amen to that.