Psychologically, we define being alive as being able to feel appropriate emotions in response to the events we experience. In other words, if a person can feel love, anger, peace, fear, pleasure, shame, sadness, and guilt, then they are spiritually alive.

As humans, our biological codes endow us with pairs of emotions: love-hate, pleasure-unease, shame-pride, guilt-acceptance, anger-acceptance. We can achieve a state of balance, called homeostasis, when we can feel each of these emotions in appropriate measure. Throughout life, we need to fluctuate between negative and positive states. It’s impossible for a person to avoid making mistakes. After making a mistake, they need to feel remorse, shame, and guilt. Ultimately, they need to be forgiven, understood, and accepted again. We cannot live without love. We need to receive love in return, or when our love is unrequited, we need to experience disappointment, the sadness of not being loved, and perhaps even give up on loving that person and turn to someone else lovable. Those we feel close to may act without hesitation, even if it means harming us. This can fill us with anger, disappointment, a desire for justice, sadness, and perhaps even a thirst for revenge. All of these apply to people who are spiritually alive.

These emotions are the elements that fill our life pool. Each is ready to be used. Even a deficiency or excess of one of these emotions is enough to make us ill. If nothing makes us happy, if everything seems meaningless, we are depressed; we are half-dead! If we cannot feel genuine anger, guilt, and shame, we suffer from an anxiety disorder. If everything only makes us angry and we are filled with resentment, we are in an aggressive mania. If everything seems to be against us, we are in a paranoid state. If we feel no guilt about anything, we are a sociopath! In the coming months, I plan to discuss the mechanisms of these disorders one by one. But this month, I will try to explain the mechanism of postponing these disorders through gossip.

Before moving on to gossips, let’s consider gambling or gaming addicts… They experience many emotions in their games. They start the game hoping to win. They can experience excitement and pleasure by winning step by step. But because this isn’t real, the pleasure is short-lived, so they continue playing until their energy is depleted. As they lose, they become angry, ambitious, and crave revenge. Virtual or real-life game addicts experience these feelings emotionally through the game, without thinking about anyone else. However, since these emotional experiences have no counterpart in reality, their feelings easily fade, and they have to start over every day.

Now, let’s talk about those who try to feel alive by gaining emotional experiences through gossip… People with low self-esteem, those who, trapped in a hole due to feelings of inadequacy, see every ray of light in their eyes… In reality, they experience so little pleasure and find no satisfaction in their lives that any possibility of others experiencing pleasure disturbs them. Notice I say possibilities, not experiences of pleasure, because gossip is the transformation of the possibilities of something that hasn’t happened into rumors.

The gossipy person is so cowardly about living that every endeavor of others is associated with something malevolent. Because they have wasted their own lives in dissatisfaction, they harbor resentment towards youth. In their fantasy, they envision a young woman or man engaged in immoral games of lust. And they derive pleasure as if it were themselves. Immediately afterward, their harsh, judgmental side emerges. They accuse, judge, and hate them. Thus, they experience feelings of pleasure, guilt, acceptance, or rejection within themselves. And they convince themselves of the reality of this. The woman in their fantasy is the one who should be expelled from society; they themselves are the one who should be accepted. Yet, they have long since alienated people because of their malevolence. Thus, within a vast series of events, they experience very deep emotions. In doing so, because they influence those around them to some extent, they somehow come into contact with reality. In this respect, gossiping deserves to be classified as a more serious mental illness than gambling or gaming addiction.

How strange, isn’t it?! Do we need grand events to be accepted? Isn’t even a simple, open greeting enough?