27 July 2008

I've been thinking about gossip a lot lately. Mostly because I've been hearing a lot of it, and partly because I'm starting to think that maybe the persistence of gossip in our daily lives is a lot more reflective of our desire to be pure than we realise.

The prevalence of gossip reveals just how much we all want to know the truth because we have accepted that the world we live in is full of lies. All we really crave for is the truth, even if it is disgusting, offensive and painful. Maybe that's what makes the world of gossip so painful. It is because somewhere along the line, the truth gets twisted, sometimes deliberately. We mortals are only scarred by our inability to tell the difference, because lies start to sound better than the truth. As much as we hate to admit it, there are some things in the world that are better off released as lies, because we have decided that there are people who deserve more than the painful truth.

But someday, all our secrets will be revealed. All our lies will be sanitised by unadulterated truth. And I honestly wonder if that will make our lives better. Will we be able to survive knowing that everyone knows about the lives that we have led? Will we be comfortable knowing that people know everything that has happened in our lives? Are intimacy and privacy priviledges of living in the comforts of our secrets?

I wonder why God wants that to happen. But more importantly, I wonder why even if I can't bare the thought of having all my secrets revealed, that we will eventually live in a world of gossip (except this time, everything is true and maybe we don't have to spread the news to know, we just will), I can't seem to agree to living in a heaven with the existence of secrets. Maybe its because it's just easier to imagine a world with people who will never understand our secrets.

3 Comments:

Blogger Amy said...

Let me quote Alexander Supertramp paraphrasing Thoreau here, "Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth."

We've got to watch Into The Wild.
:(

July 29, 2008 at 8:40 AM  
Blogger cathy said...

I never thought of gossip that way - as an unguided craving for truth. We want to know "things" about others that we don't necessarily want others to know about ourselves. Maybe we want reassurance that everyone is fallen, just like us, and take pride in finding proof of that.

A few hours after I read your entry, I came upon a synopsis of a similarly-themed Arts Club production called "Doubt": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubt_(play) Interesting.

July 30, 2008 at 11:35 PM  
Blogger Lorenzo said...

I remembered the Supertramp/Thoreau thing, too. "Give me truth."

I think that the reality of events that happened (i.e. "gossip") is different from truth. Truth will always be comforting and consoling, because it is... well... truth. The reality of life in this world is what gets ugly: what really happened, and/or how people will respond to what really happened.

My point is that something that really happened, that is "true", doesn't necessarily line up with truth, in the ultimate sense. That's what explains the bittersweet aftertaste sometimes associated with truth. Truth can only be good.


In a world where all we can know is truth, I can see comfort in everything being out in the open, though. I actually can't wait for that day.

July 31, 2008 at 9:59 PM  

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