You can't unsay what has been said. The following story is one I heard many years ago. I like how it illustrates this truth. The other truth is that you can't un-hear what you are told. I work hard at avoiding gossip. I can control what I do and don't say. The worst for me is hearing something I don't want to hear. It affects how I see someone else and I can't undo what I heard.

There was once a woman who went around her village telling a story about her neighbor. She loved the shock she saw on everyone’s faces and she especially loved all the attention she was getting herself. A few days later, however, her neighbor confronted her and told her the truth about the situation. Now the woman felt terrible and wished she had never said anything at all.

Not knowing how to solve her problem she went to the wise man of the village. She explained what she had done and asked him how she could fix it.

He told her to go home and get her feather pillow. Then, when the evening wind began to blow, she should toss all the feathers into the wind. Then she should return the next day.

The woman went home, cut open her feather pillow, and tossed all the feathers into the evening wind. The next day she returned to the wise man. He told her to take her pillowcase and go out and gather up all the feathers. She went and spent the entire day gathering feathers. At the end of the day her pillowcase was not even half full. She returned to the wise man with her pillowcase and explained to him that she had done her best, but that she simply couldn’t find all the feathers.

The wise man looked at her and said, “And so it is when we tell a story. We cannot know where it has spread and we cannot call it back again.”