adminFredrick Qaphelani Mabikwa Successful Solutions
A lady colleague recently came to me in a flood of tears lamenting that someone whom she trusted and thought was her best friend had been saying very bad things about her. She said she was having sleepless nights and it was affecting her performance at work. She couldn’t stomach the fact that this particular “best friend” hates her. It is okay to feel this way, it’s natural. I however had a few shocking words for her.
The first shock was that, many a time our worst enemies are our so-called “best friends”. These are the people whom we confide in and they know almost everything about our lives, which makes it easier for them to destroy us. I am in no way saying let us not have friends but let’s be careful of those people who want to stick to us like glue.
I personally have many good friends but I don’t have a “best friend”, it’s a concept I don’t believe in. It’s also a painful fact of life that we cannot be liked by everyone. Human beings may not like you for various reasons and thus human nature. If you think all people like you at the work place or in the greater family, thus wishful thinking. There are those who will hate you so much that given an opportunity they would poison your food.
In a family, siblings can hate each other. In a family when siblings are children and are still under the guidance and care of parents, they are very close to each other and love each other as children. When they leave home and they start living different lives as adults, things would normally change at this stage. Some siblings might begin to hate each other. The failures would usually hate those who worked hard and made it in life. These are sad facts of life. If your sister/brother can wish you very bad and spread very malicious rumours about you what more a mere friend.
Some people will spread malicious gossip about your physical appearance. For example malicious talk can be spread by someone that you have a long chin, a big head, and big bums and so on. Some of the gossip is cheap but fact. They will say your child is dull in school and that you have a big nose and they laugh about it.
When you hear it you cry and worry. Does the worry and crying make your child intelligent or reduce the size of your nose? Some people will hate you because you lead an organised life. Some will hate you for your disciplined children because their own children behave like bandits.
Some will hate you because you have refused to join them to do bad things. You come out smart every time, they say you are a show off and you spend all your money on clothes. You come out unkempt again they say, you are dirty yet you earn enough to be smart. What do you do then? Either way people will gossip about you. You assist financially; they say you are showing off with your money. You don’t assist, they say you are stingy. You cannot in any way please everybody in life. If you want to be unhappy in life, try to please everybody. When you discover that some people whom you trusted cannot be trusted, keep away from them.
We have people in our lives that we must keep away from because they have become hazards in our lives. People who just want to see us sink. Some of these people will pretend to be our friends and some are our relatives. As I have already said in most cases in life it is these people whom we think are close to us who are our worst enemies.They will smile when facing you and frown as soon as they turn their head the other side.
If you are driving, you don’t put anyone in the front seat. That’s a special seat. For couples, in a culture where the man drives, thus the special seat for the wife. So you don’t let anyone seat in the front seat of your car. You let bad people near you because you can’t avoid them, you want to please them, they will kill you. When they are with you in the front seat, you stop at a red traffic light as the law demands.
However such people will tell you that you don’t have to necessarily stop at a red traffic light, you must check right and left and proceed with caution. They will tell you to do dangerous things in a manner that seems to make sense, just to get you killed. You don’t need these people in the front seat of your car, you don’t even need them at the back seat, for they can still influence your driving, put them in the boot and lock and forget about them.
Don’t feel guilty selecting people you must hang around with, don’t feel guilty avoiding poisonous people who don’t add value to your life. Let’s not also give these people ammunition to gossip about us. I did say some time ago about “gossip in the workplace”, that some people go about volunteering their private information they were not even asked about. Going about the neighbourhood or workplace shopping for sympathy. Because sympathy is for free, you will indeed get it but it will bring with it laughter and gossip.
Let us not worry about gossipers and gossip. The worry doesn’t change anything; instead it can cause us medical conditions like high blood pressure. If you hear that so and so said this and that about you, just ignore it. Only act when it’s dangerous gossip.
If the Jews could gossip about Jesus, the son of God, that he said he was the Son of God and that he said he would destroy the temple and build it in three days, then who are we ordinary people to worry about gossip. Peope will gossip about a corpse. You will hear them say.
“You see the man lying in that coffin, he was very evil…” As long as you walk this earth people will gossip about you, it’s human nature. Let us learn to just ignore cheap gossip.
Online Reporter