Sirach 19:4-17

Have you heard something? Let it die with you.
Be brave, it will not make you burst!
Having heard something, the fool suffers birth-pangs
like a woman in labour with a child.
Like an arrow stuck in a person’s thigh,
so is gossip inside a fool. (Sirach 19:10-12)

I expect gossip. I fully expect humans in groups to talk to one another in an effort to understand one another.

What I do not fully understand is the tendency to use such conversation to condemn or shame or sanction.

We are curious creatures, both in beholding and being beheld. Let us talk of and to each other, but in love, appreciation, and to truly understand.