Question #11

You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire.  They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend.  The criticism is distasteful and unjustified.  What do you do?

Wow this is a tough one.  There is the way I want to answer, you know the way that I know is morally right, but then there is the the nature of gossip.  I really always try hard not to get caught up in it, but some times its so easy to sit and listen. While you are there listening there is that little voice in your head telling you, wow your life is not so bad comparison to theirs or well at least I don't have that going on in my life.  I can say with honesty that I have always minimized my continuation of gossip, but I do tend to listen ... just not tell it over again. I think that I would most likley listen to see the direction of the topic as well as the source of it. I would then interject with things that I know to be the truth about my friend as well as the unreliablity of the source and the distasteful nature of gossip.