If you ever need to know answers, go to the source itself and get the correct answer.
I want to say it again, because it matters: if you ever need to know answers — about a person, about a thing, about what really happened — go to the source itself and get the correct answer. Not the version that travelled. Not the version that someone else is sure of. The source. The only place the correct answer lives.
Rumors are not a good thing.
Rumors are not a good thing. They never were. They sound like knowledge, and they feel like belonging, but they are neither. They are someone's life carried around by people who don't carry it well. And the person it's about is always the last to know, and the first to be hurt.
If you hear someone talk about someone else, tell them to stop. It's not right.
So here is the part that takes courage, and here is the part I'm asking you to do: if you hear someone talk about someone else — pass them around, dress them up, decide who they are from a distance — tell them to stop. You don't have to be loud. You just have to mean it. Say: stop. That's not ours. It's not right.
It works the other way too. If someone comes to you with someone else's story, send them to the source. Say: if you want to know about them, go and ask them. I'll listen to them, not to the version. That single sentence shuts most of it down. And the room learns, slowly, that you are not a place where people get passed around.
Go to the source. Tell the rest to stop. That's the whole rule.