Triple Filter Test

The Story

Aurthur - Unknown
One day an acquaintance met a great and wise philosopher and said, "do you know what I just heard about your friend?"
"Pause a moment," The wise man replied. "Before telling me anything I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?"
"That's right," the wise man continued. "Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say.

The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said, "actually just heard about it and..."
"All right," said the wise man. "So you don't really know if it's true or not.
Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?"
"No, on the contrary..."
"So," the wise man continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, but  you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because
there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?"
"No, not really."
"Well," concluded the wise philosopher, "if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"

My Message:

This is such a great story to remember when we have that desire to spread useless (sometimes harmful) information about others. It's always so hard to stop ourselves from spreading gossip, we all humans at the end of the day, but maybe the above 'Triple Filter Test' can prove to be a simple tool to quickly evaluate that your word has meaning and importance.

I wish you an awesome week of only goodness and success!
Darren Zwiers

The Quote:
“It takes two to speak truth, one to speak and another to hear.” - Henry David Thoreau