Say, did you hear the gossip?

This quote bothers me. I don't remember precisely where I first saw it, but even then it struck me wrong. See, I like ideas as well as the next gal, but when's the last time you knew anybody who spends all their time deconstructing Shakespeare or theorizing about neurological breakthroughs? This quote, Miss Eleanor, sounds kind of pissy to me.

I have spent the better part of my 62 years thinking I was supposed to know things before I learned them, and feeling like a failure because I didn't. Nobody explained to me, back in the squishy years, that you only know what you know until you learn some more, and that the adventure is to be found in the learning. I've got some decent, acceptable gray matter, not off the charts by any means, but the ol' neurons are still firing pretty well. So that lands me solidly in the events category, according to the above rubric.

See, that's the trouble. I see something like this quote and, given my general hierarchical thinking and penchant for comparing myself to everyone else, I just don't measure up. Again. Especially because what I really like is talking about people. And that is the real rub here.

With all due respect to Eleanor, I think this is upside down and inside out. Talking about people is where it's at. I'll go you one further, and come out solidly in favor of gossip. No, not the Bad Girls kind of gossip portrayed in the teenage movies. Not the gossip that is malicious and intended to destroy another person. I'm talking about good old-fashioned over the back fence news gathering. We didn't always have the internet, you know.

Human beings are relational critters. We get all up in each other's business, and that's for good cause. It can be annoying and destructive, but it's really what kept us alive long enough to invent candy bars and washing machines. We talk about each other because it is the most interesting subject there is, and we talk about ourselves because we need to know who we are and why we're here and what we care about.

I heard part of a story on NPR recently about how tea drinking among women in Ireland was railed against as a scourge not unlike alcoholism. This was a good while ago ---- turn of the last century? ---- and there was an effort to discourage it as a waste of time and resources. The very idea of those women getting together for tea! They were probably just gossiping because that's what women do, right? They get together and they gossip about their neighbors and they neglect their children and don't get their work done and waste money on tea, which is obviously addictive and will probably ruin the family unit as we know it. 

Women. Gossip.

I'm not even going to go into men and gossip. Not being a man, I don't have direct experience, so I would only be able to perpetuate stereotypes. But I've been a woman for a long time, and I can tell you that yes, women's conversations frequently center on people. That's because people are important. Human behavior is important. We value our relationships. We talk about our own families, our own relationships, and other people as well. We pass along news of sickness, trouble, break-ups, but also joys, new babies, love. Gossip? I suppose you can call it that. But it is the thread that weaves us into relationship with each other and our wider community. If I don't know you are down with the flu, how can I call to check on you or bring you chicken soup? If I haven't heard through the grapevine that your son has been arrested for drugs, how can I offer my experience, strength and hope? 

Women have been dismissed because of "gossip" for centuries. Men do the important thinking. Women just sit around and gossip. The very idea that relational thinking and talking is what holds society together, gets little traction. And with more and more women intruding into the public sphere of ideas at the very highest levels, there seems to be a feeling among some people that men are being submerged, sidelined, diminished. However pejorative the "gossipy old woman" image has been, it seems to have been necessary to define the contrasting role of men as strong, silent, and logical. So now we have a war on women, and a war on men, and a war on fatherhood, and a war on the family.....

Human beings have developed language in order to convey ideas, to recount and plan events, and to bind people together in their joys and sorrows. We all, male and female, young and old, need all three, Eleanor Roosevelt notwithstanding. And there I can rest, with the assurance that I'm not striving for something unattainable or falling into a pit of hopeless inadequacy, I'm simply another human being sharing the planet. Yay me.