Hello everyone, Happy new year once more to you all.

Now I promised you all another surprise this year which has been added to my post today.

To give a brief background, I thought it will be a good idea if I add voice recordings to my posts in order to give warriors / individuals with visual disabilities the chance to listen to my blog posts instead of reading them. Thus, in between my post today you would see a media file with my voice note. I hope you enjoy listening.

It’s a bit of an awkward post to start the year with – “Shh, did you know?” but nonetheless I hope it resonates with some of you.

So I’ll start with a bible verse from Jeremiah 17 v 9 that is related to this post and It says “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

In my life, I’ve come across various kinds of individuals. True friends and insincere friends. I guess the worst kind of friends one can encounter are the insincere type. The kind of friends that take joy in gossip and backbiting. 

Such insincere friends are shallow sets of individuals who derive joy and pleasure in hurting other people. They take delicate information they know little about and thread a web of lies and deceit. Their unsuspecting victims then become the subject of gossip and undue discussions. 

Owning to the fact that we generally live in a world that is absent of moral values and shuns the belief in God. Many times, getting one’s finger burnt whilst having relations with these set of individuals can set the tone for discouragement and dejection whilst weaving a triad or more of hurting people.

It’s really sad when one discloses delicate information to a deemed friend who uses that information to belittle and reduce you. Many times I’ve heard sayings of individuals who have gotten their fingers burnt all in the name of being open in friendships. 

What’s the purpose if I may ask of gossip and backbiting? Little do these insincere individuals understand that their gossip partners are only friends because of the subject of their discussions. Take away the subject of their gossip and it becomes obvious to them that they all have nothing in common.

On the other hand, their unsuspecting victims in turn realize that they need to be more covert/secretive in their relations with others and to disclose information simply on a need-to-know basis. This I view as the best solution.

In conclusion, I would like to share a video from an Instagram handle @Vishen. It depicts how negative emotions can affect plants in a bizarre way. This experiment can be used to show the dangers of bullying, with gossip being its most subtle form.

Reference: @Vishen – “How your emotions affect your plants”.