Don’t worry about people talking behind your back.  A student stopped in yesterday to talk to me, and revealed that they were very upset because someone was saying things about them to other people.  I wish I could tell you from the wisdom of my 36 trips around the sun that this would get easier, but it doesn’t; I found out a while back that someone who I had a great deal of respect for, and who I thought returned those feelings, was saying some things to other people about me that were pretty disrespectful and hurtful.

This naturally made me very angry, but my wife, whose only instance of poor judgment on her record is her choice of spouse, urged me to, in a manner of speaking, count to ten and reflect; and upon doing so, I recognized that what I was really feeling was disappointment.

My particular disappointment subsided as I thought back to a saying I once read:

“Don’t worry about those who talk behind your back.  They’re behind you for a reason.”

I’ve spoken before how it is increasingly easy to talk behind people’s back; you can hide behind anonymity on Twitter and blogs, and use the myriad of social media at our disposal to speak poorly about people without them knowing about it.  But while the methods of this phenomenon may have changed, the reasons haven’t.

People who say unflattering things about you to people other than you are projecting something they don’t like about themselves on you.  It is very easy and tempting to do, and I’d venture to say that almost all of us have done it at some time or another.  The important thing is to learn that it has absolutely no positive impact, and doesn’t get you anywhere you want to go.  Once I recognized that fact, I became much better at avoiding the trap of figuratively stabbing someone in the back.

So don’t sweat too much when you find out someone is doing this; there isn’t a whole lot you can do about it. What you can control is on your end; as our buddy Abe Lincoln said, “We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”

You know what, he was a pretty smart dude.  As for those who have done this to me, and maybe even continue to do so: My disappointment has gradually faded into a sort of pity for them. And I’ve learned it is very difficult to be angry with people you feel sorry for.