So you’ve been told gossip is bad your whole life, but guess what, it can actually make you a more insightful person if you elevate it.  How do you step up your gossip game?  Firstly, we view gossip as a undesirable tactic that is used by snippy women, but all of us engage in it at some level or another.  Gossip at it’s base level is basically judging people that we barely know based off what we heard, but it can also make us more caring and insightful as individuals if we so chose.  When you talk about someone, consider what their motivations could’ve been.  Why did she steal?  Maybe it’s the fact that she’s poor and had too much pride to ask for money.  Why is she so promiscuous?  Maybe it’s because she finds no value in herself because someone made her feel that way.  Why does she continue to stay with him?  Perhaps her self-esteem has been lowered so much that she feels she has nowhere to turn to.  When you start to ask more questions, you see how they got to where they are and you become more compassionate in the process.

When you are able to discuss people at great lengths over and over with different groups of people, you start to see that there are trends in how people act and you can start to decipher what happened to someone even before they tell you their past.  You know that people react mostly about the same to life events and you can predict what they will do.  Human actions haven’t changed over the years, only what we think about them have.  When you can dissect them at this level, you will understand them more profoundly.  I liken this skill to the same skill I have in analyzing and interpreting books.  To be really good at both, you must practice your skills by discussing them more often in book-club like settings.  Now tell your mom she was wrong when she said gossip won’t get you anywhere.  The skill to becoming more empathetic and knowledgeable about our fellow human beings lies in our grasp, but it is up to us how we get there.