"Reality is that which, even if you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."This one sparked thoughts about belief and faith as opposed to truly knowing. Some people mistakenly speak of things they believe in as if they are absolute fact. It's hard for me to trust people who speak in this way. I wonder if they really mean what they say, or are they trying to delude others, or are they just need to believe what they say is true. I guess I'm mainly speaking of religious and political talk. There's so much "I'm right and anything else is wrong" talk that is disturbing to me. How do they know? I don't get how they can be so sure of what they speak about. And the inability to back up what they say makes it impossible for me to take them seriously. You can say that this is what you believe in or how you see things, but don't present it as absolute when you have nothing to substantiate that claim. Well, you can do that if you want, but it undermines your integrity in my eyes.
"Whoever gossips to you—will gossip about you."This quote expresses something I've considered and am cautious about. I've been around folk who blast on with racial and ethnic invective against other peoples. Foul nasty comments that speak strong of us being better than them. But I am not part of this person's us. It seems these people just note that I am not part of the them they are speaking of with condescension. What they don't consider is that I might find such discrimination offensive (which I do). I don't say anything against them because I don't want them to censor themselves. I know that chastising does nothing to change people views, so I use the exerience to find out what these people are really about, and the best way to do that is to let them speak freely.
The other aspect to this is concern in sharing personal things about myself. Can I trust this person I'm talking to? When people I'm conversing with devote much time to talking about the personal lives of others (which tends to be about the personal, sensational, and intimate), I become very cautious and less revealing because I fear that if they can talk so freely about others to me, they are probably free to talk to others about me.
