The 48 Laws of Virtue

There are those though, who it seems as if gossiping is their profession. They are always seeking to bend the ear of someone who is willing to be a mental landfill for all of the garbage they need to verbally release. They have very little good to say about anyone or anything. They are pessimistic and never seem to have an optimistic viewpoint. These are those who will suck the life right out of you, if you let them.

The key is to not let them.

Also, avoiding gossip in this day and age is almost impossible because it is everywhere you turn. If you are at the grocery store and you are about to check out, the gossip columns are right there. If you are at home channel surfing and trying to find something to watch on the television, the gossip channels (aka reality shows) are right there. If you check your social media pages and look at your news feeds, gossip fills the stream. If you go to work and are trying to mind your own business, somebody from somewhere is going to stop by your cubicle and whisper something in your ear about someone else. It is literally all around you.

The challenge then for most people, is to live in a era where there are clearly gossipers all around, but yet not let it affect the way you think, communicate and view the world around you. A woman of virtue has a strategy which protects her from gossipers and it is a powerful one, she simply does not have time for it. The verse for this law is so like her when it says “…and (she) does not eat the bread of idleness.”

If you really want to stop a gossiper in their tracks, the next time they approach you with some garbage, just tell them you don’t have time for it, smile and go right back to what you were doing before they started. And if you want to not get sucked into the social newsfeed, stuck at the checkout aisle, or drawn into a TV gossip channel, just remember that a woman of virtue does not eat the bread of idleness.

104 | The 48 Laws of Virtue