You wanna hear a story
Is there anybody you 100% trust in this world? Personally I don’t, don’t get me wrong I do have people I have a measure of trust for but I can’t absolutely trust anyone. That doesn’t mean to say I don’t tell a selected few or even a single person some of my secrets. If I tell someone classified information I assume that there is a +1 who automatically has been told that information. It’s the only way I can keep sane and in control of the things being said towards another individual. That way if information was to leak out about my classified information, I am already mentally prepared to own up and say that “Yes, I did say that” (if need be) and give a valid explanation to why I said it; this is based on the grounds that I was gossiping about someone in a negative way. The explanation is not on the level of possible guilt drawn from what was said, i.e. I do not act defensive towards that person, but rather I take the approach of allowing them to understand the reasoning behind my words. Whether they agree or not is not the issue at hand, the important thing is making them understanding; do not confuse the two.
This approach doesn’t make it right that I spread the information to someone else in the first place. If you think your secrets are being kept with someone like a hidden treasure chest, you will one day be in for a shock. Selective telling is very useful, it can allow you to at least guess work how a group of individuals obtained information from a most likely source that is also acquainted with you. It’s a very good test to see how long that person will crack, because they will eventually say something, the question is will they say something at a critical or uncritical time or person? (critical refers to the relevance of the person and the information at the time).
If I found out that information was spread about me from a primary source, i.e. someone I told, they would never ever know that I knew, unless someone told them they think or know that I knew that they spread that information. For me, I’m all about the mental, I’ll let guilt be your best burden because I would just make you look like a fool and toy with your head- this is only the case if you do not own up to it. The fact of the matter is you don’t respect me enough to even say “Sorry, that was me who said that. It was because…”, you’re just allowing it to ride, so you have every right to be abused mentally via tactful manipulation. Being brash about situations doesn’t help, patience is the best virtue because it allows you to foresee a situation being outlived.
So if you’re being told something to someone, and to your knowledge they are a critical thinker, assume that they already know who you could possibly tell and that they have already worked out every single situation that can be resultant of that information being leaked, because everyone is a storyteller, some are just better than others at telling stories.
Now don’t read this and think that I’m saying that people lie all the time, people do lie but not all the time, my point is that some lie more frequently than others, some because they are afraid of the truth, and others are just subtle liars (no real damage caused). People need to compare what is being told to them by what they understand a person’s character to be like, and then conjoin the two understandings in order to work out whether what they are saying is likely to be true or not.
That’s all I have to say, I’m sure you have much more to add to this.
