When will you make your next slip?

Today I was just reflecting on how much we like to read news about celebrities, successful top executives, movie stars etc because we want to see where and when they have slipped. The media (print as well as electronic) are usually sniffing out these information, juicing it up and presenting it to us who eagerly and earnestly lap it all up.

A number of ‘busy executives’ do not read soft sells because they are busy, the younger folks like their pictures on the glossy magazines and some of us will flip through channels at the end of the day while unwinding, whether we are deliberately seeking these info or not we ‘bump into them anyway’ because it is plastered all over. The busy housewife now known as a homemaker also cannot help but see the headlines at the glossies en-route the check out counter and takes that piece of news with her. We do not seek it, we get it and we use it.

Why is it that their errors and mistakes are important to us? Why is it that they make enough lounge talk, bar conversations, blogging topics and gossips? Why is it that their mistakes are the gain of others? Someone said that is the price of being a celebrity? Why do they have to pay more than you or me? And that bring me to the real gist of what hit me today…in the little worlds of our own, our homes, our community, our office, our church (if you have any), our circle of friends, someone is looking up to us…a sister’s son (nephew), a brother’s daughter (niece), cousins? They are all looking up to one person in the family or the other or one of their parents’ friends and what would we like them to see? Our mistakes? Our slippages? Our errors? Our sins of commission and omission? I am not sure that will really be the picture we want to present.

I guess you can easily say you are not a celebrity or a movie star but you are a role model to someone and our mistakes we will like to hide from them and when we get it right we will want them to know about it. Same goes for our leaders and other people in authority over us – probably in the office …our managers and supervisors. Let us not focus on their mistakes, let us not watch like the paparazzi taking pictures and setting them up so that they will fall or feeding the wrong information through ‘the grapevine’. There must be some good in them, there must be some strength they possess…let us talk about those and let us build people and not tear down.