Trash talk

We're all human, and because of this, we like a bit of gossip. Even if you say you don't. There's always that tiny, insignificant part of your life where you do like to hear something about someone or maybe even say something about someone.

The buddhist say if you have only bad things to say about someone, keep them to yourself.

This is fair. While you may still think these thoughts, it's probably best to keep them to yourself. If anything, just to not harm your own self image.

While I have bad mouthed people in the past, and occasionally I'm still guilty of doing so. It is my flaw. It's something I've been working on for years, and I can tell I'm getting better at not doing it. I still find myself occasionally letting out what I think about someone, and letting it out in a bad way.

One of the ways I know I'm getting better is that I don't do it as often, or other peoples flaws effect me less than what they use to. But the most identifiable factor is where I see others do it to me. Don't misunderstand, not at me, but to me.

What I mean is when I may know a group of friends. I like them all. But one might say something bad about the other friend, and the other friend says something bad about them. Though in person, everyone gets along just fine.

Recently I spoke to two people I know. They know of each other, but they're not friends. However, one person told me about how they felt towards this other person. They voiced their opinion about their personality, their practices and their ways. I took this into consideration, as I agreed with some of what was said, though a lot of it was due to their own opinion, which I had no experience with, therefore I could not agree.

The person it was aimed at doesn't know what's being said about him. They don't know that I know this either. However, today, meeting that person, they bad mouthed another person in the same circle.

It would seem that everyone is talking about each other, but no one is actually speaking to one another. What the heck does that mean? Well, I might say something bad about you, but you say something about our other friend, and they might say something about another friend, who said something bad about me, or you.

And the vicious circle continues to spin round and round.

Everyone has an opinion, and that's fine. But when it conflicts or undermines what I think, I am affected too.

Todays talk was about someone who has helped me. The problem is, the person I spoke to today has been bad mouthed about from someone else I know.

It's really funny because when I started to teach music and organise myself, I started to make friends in the music industry more and more. It turns out that competition is almost non-existant. Everyone seems to be helpful with each other.

I started doing drum circles, and rather than other organisations that do that sort of thing contacting me and telling me to piss off, they were there first, I'm on their turf. They have all encouraged me to do more drum circles. If I opened a car yard right next to another one tomorrow, do you think I'd get the same response? Heck no! I'd be in direct competition with the guy and probably start a war.

But my experience with music, everyone seems to support everyone else. As if we're all in it together. And I like that.

Now, today I met up with the guys from the music shop I looked at purchasing a while ago. They called me in to have a meeting due to their heads up on me opening my own school. I knew why they called me to come and see them. I didn't mind. My wife said it's a waste of time. Do your own thing. But I'm friendly and open to opinions and options. So I went to see what they had to say and see if it was different to what my wife and I assumed.

While we were just about spot on with what the nature of the meeting was about. I held my ground. I'm sticking with opening my own music school. Not someone else's. However, I chose to take the meeting as an opportunity to voice my opinion and feelings about opening up the music school.

I think their fear was that I was competition. The word was mentioned. So I brought that up, and mentioned that we're too far apart to be competitors. Amalgamating, well, no, because that requires me to pay you fees, and I'm here on my own, just how I like it. Reduced fees. Yeah, but I've already invested my time and money on my own thing, to start again is going backwards from here. Even if it was cost free.

Either way we looked at it, I had my ball rolling and wasn't planning on stopping it or changing direction. However, despite my assurance that we can still work in the same industry and still be friends didn't seem like it went down well. Again, my gut feeling tells me that this is going to be rocky. I don't want to dwell on it too much, if at all. In fact, my head is down in my own thing now more than ever and I really don't care what other people's intentions are. However much they have rocked the boat for me.

Truth is, we're not competitors, we are friends, so lets just work together and not bad mouth others who are not only in our industry too, but people I still talk to and deal with. If you feel that way, fine, keep it to yourself and we can all be happy.

I thought about how I was going to write this, and as like all my blog entries, it's just another brain explosion, or Kasplosion... KASPLODE!

Today's meeting just confirmed to me that I am glad I didn't end up within that organisation. I'm in control of my own karma.