I don't know where it came from, but the other day a thought crossed my mind.  It wasn't even fully formed thought.  It was just a simple saying that resonated within me.  As I considered it, I felt there was great truth in it.  The thought, the saying?  "We often take a mere flavor of fact and turn it into a feast of fiction."

That was it.  Not profound by the standards of great philosophers, but pretty profound for me given my lower standards.  The more I considered it, the more I realized it described one of the weaknesses, one of the failings, of humankind.  Too often we hear some slip of truth and quickly turn it into a full blown fictional story that is embellished to resemble a Hollywood movie.  That or we take some small fact and turn it into something major that is harmful to someone else.

 

Most often it isn't our singular effort but rather a collaborative effort starting with us telling of that slip of a fact to get the ball rolling or in retelling, with a few tweaks, something to keep the ball rolling.  When we mention an innocuous single fact it seems to take on a life of its own.  We have heard of experiments with the relaying of some small story, some mere fact from person to person.  By the time it reaches the end of the line and then is compared with what was first told, the differences are startling.

 

We often do the same thing with information we hear about some family member or friend.  Or it might be something that someone passed along to us.  We hear a rumor or a suggestion concerning someone we know, and our creative and fertile minds grow it into something more than it merits.  Too often the embellished story comes at the expense of someone else.  What starts as an innocuous bit of information becomes a fully fledged story that most times is injurious to the party it is about. 

 

Maybe it's our subconscious need to demean others in the public's eye so we appear better.  Or maybe it just our inherent need to hear or be the source of juicy slander.  The only time we don't care for it is when we are the subject of that growing, malicious story.  Then we wonder how anyone could be so cruel.

 

Will the fourth or fifth person to tell someone of this musings get it right?  I think not.