A Pillow Full of Feathers

 

“There’s no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.” ~ Glenn Campbell

Once upon a time in a small European town, lived a man who loved to tell stories about other people. He embellished the stories with little details he invented but reasoned that the gist of the stories was still truth, albeit flowery as it left him. One day he heard a rumour about a fellow businessman in town and the urge to tell it was almost suffocating him. He packaged it as usual and told two friends. These two told it to their friends, who told it to their wives, who told it to their neighbours and on and on until the whole town was talking about it. Soon enough, word got round to the subject of the story and by this time, the story was grossly distorted. 

Let’s call the subject Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith upon hearing the story ran to his Rabbi in distress wailing and crying for help for he reckoned his reputation was now ruined! The good Rabbi calmed him down and told him to allow him to handle the matter. The Rabbi called the storyteller and told him how devastated Mr. Smith was and it made him really sorry but he defended himself by telling the Rabbi how much of it was true. The Rabbi told him he had committed the sin of slander – akin to murder, because he had killed a person’s reputation. In great remorse, the storyteller asked how he could undo the damage he had done. The Rabbi asked him to go get a feather pillow and return with it. On his return, the Rabbi handed him a knife, opened a window and asked him to rip the pillow apart.

“But Rabbi, it will make a mess!”, he said.

“Do as I say”, replied the Rabbi.

As expected, a cloud of feathers gushed out as soon as the pillow was ripped open. They landed on the furniture in the room, floated in the air and a gust of them flew out of the window in a swirling, whirling trail.

The Rabbi waited for 10 minutes then ordered the man to bring back all the feathers, and stuff them back into the pillow. 

“All of them, mind you. Not one may be missing!”

In despair, the storyteller cried “Impossible, Rabbi! I can’t do that and you know it!”

“Yes,” said the Rabbi and nodded gravely, “that is how it is: once a rumour, a gossipy story, a secret, leaves your mouth, you do not know where it ends up. It flies on the wings of the wind, and you can never get it back!”

And with that, the story teller was now a murderer – he had killed a reputation. His listeners were now accomplices in the murder. Any trust that Mr. Smith ever had with him had gone with the feathers out the window, and likewise for any that his listeners had hitherto had in him. He did apologize, but it was never the same again.

And that, dear friends, is the position we find ourselves in when we decide to scratch the itch that causes us to play broken telephone. The eternal repercussions of our present gratification are lost on us as we scramble to find equally itchy ears to convert into willing accomplices. May the last words of the Rabbi ever ring in our ears to remind us that we can never gather back what we are about to scatter.

“Find those feathers, find where each blew – damage done by words is as hard to undo.” ~A verse in   the song ‘Feathers’ by Lawrence M. Lesser