Gossip: Not the Bad Kind, The Good, Helpful Kind

Gossip:  A person who chatters or repeats idle talk and rumors about others.

I've been to a few meetings recently where the discussion has centered around the slow improvement we make on our defects.  At least we're supposed to make slow progress, or try to make slow progress, or pay lip service to making slow progress while actually doing nothing at all.  The idea is to get rid of some of our defects, I guess.

The 6th Step talks a lot about the fact that most of us are going to have to be content with steady progress.  We don't do "steady" very well.  We look wistfully at the 1st Step and recall how the desire to drink was lifted from us completely, as soon as we asked, with seemingly little effort on our part.  The power of god, or some such nonsense.  We wonder why this shadowy Higher Power won't lift the rest of our defects out of us, too.  One day we're impatient; the next day we have the patience of Job, boom! just like that.  Gone, bye-bye.  Perfectionism, delivered by express mail right from Olympus towering top.

Usually what we see is improvement, assuming we keep doing the work.  Gossip seems to be a popular defect that resonates with a lot of alcoholics.  We start out awash in malicious, vindictive, venomous gossip (aren't those great adjectives?); we begin to move into idle telling of tales behind another's back, and justify it by our lack of venom or our belief that the talk is more along the lines of constructive criticism, despite the fact the person is no where to be seen and can't benefit from something he is unaware of.  The people we gossip with gets smaller and smaller.  "After all," we think.  "I have to get my frustration with this dude off my chest somehow."  This way we can keep gossiping and pretend that it really isn't gossiping.

I guess Nirvana would be not even thinking poorly of others.  Yeah.  Oh, yeah.