JumpStart Back to the Future Day (10/21/24)

QUOTE:  "The mouth should have three gatekeepers.  It it true?  Is it kind?  Is it necessary?" (Anonymous)

MESSAGE:  Mrs. Heinz was the best second grade teacher.  Ever.  My family had just moved from Washington to Montana, and I was new to the school, but don’t remember feeling nervous which I’m sure was due in large part to my new teacher.  Our classroom was next to the library and just a couple of doors down from my sister’s first grade class.  She gave us ‘frosted donuts’ (-0 with a squiggly line for frosting) at the top of our page for excellent work with good penmanship, and at the end of the year we all went and had a picnic at her house.  During that red letter year, I felt seen and as though I belonged.

Mrs. Heinz did not tolerate gossip, and had this little ditty she used to sing.  First you start a calypso clap (your pointer and middle fingers together against the opposite palm) and then start in with the lyrics:

Gossip, gossip, evil thing
Much unhappiness it brings
If you can’t say something nice
Don’t talk at all is my advice.

Fast forward a few decades to adulting and my first teaching job.  I learned quickly not to eat lunch in the faculty lounge because it was a hotbed of gossipy toxicity.  It was full of dissatisfied teachers trying to find belonging by finding a common enemy, whether it was the administration or some student or other.  Brené Brown calls this ‘common enemy intimacy.’

“Common enemy intimacy is counterfeit connection and the opposite of true belonging.  If the bond we share with others is simply that we hate the same people, the intimacy we experience is often intense, immediately gratifying, and an easy way to discharge outrage and pain.  It is not, however, fuel for real connection.  It’s fuel that runs hot, burns fast, and leaves a trail of polluted emotion.  And if we live with any level of self-awareness, it’s also the kind of intimacy that can leave us with the intense regrets of an integrity hangover.  Did I really participate in that?  Is that moving us forward? Am I engaging in, quite literally, the exact same behavior that I find loathsome in others?”  (Brown, Braving the Wilderness, p. 136.)

Ask yourself this:  If you don’t talk to people when you’re frustrated with them or have a problem that needs to be addressed, what do you do?  You talk about them, and that’s destructive, not productive.
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THIS WEEK, TRY THIS:  Try going for a day without gossiping.  If it’s negative, and/or not your story to tell, don’t say anything.  If you DO talk about people behind their back, make sure it’s positive so that when it gets back to them, it makes their day a red letter day.  Maybe challenge your homeroom/class/club to do the same.

DAD JOKE:  ME:  Doc, I have a problem with my left ear.  DR:  are you sure?  ME:  Yeah, I'm definite.