What's your secret?
Hold, hide, and hush – a life of secrets.
We hold our secrets like leaves that hold the last light of day. Our life depends on it.
Life teaches us to be reticent very early on. As younglings, we enjoy the newfound ability to create small mysteries and peak other people’s interest. Kept information is power, we learn. We suddenly have a small edge over our peers. So we chase that thrill and begin to gossip. Know everything about everyone but share nothing about yourself. We want to be the Keeper of Secrets. The best knower and the best hider.
It is considered a valuable trait to be a good secret-keeper. You’re a reliable confidante amongst friends. People seek you out to share their deepest desires and ugliest mysteries. But as time goes by, you feel disconnected and isolated from those close to you.
You realise that everyone keeps secrets. It doesn’t make you different from others, it actually makes you the same. Soon, the power trip ends, like it should and you stop finding any thrill in it. You realise that you’re just another vessel to hold someone else’s stories until they learn to hold them on their own. And that being trustworthy is a good thing. But seeking thrill in this knowledge is childish and you can let that go. And you have your own stories too, wrapped up and put away in boxes in the fortress of your mind. You’ve kept them from the world for reasons you don’t even have names for, yet. As you grow up, you learn the names – shame, guilt, fear.
Without anyone teaching you, you know the feeling of what is okay and what isn’t. So you know that keeping something private is different from keeping a secret. Being a private person is a harmless choice, a personal temperament. It feels okay. A secret is meant to intentionally hide. It does not feel okay. The people we’re surrounded by also play a role in whether we keep secrets at all. Are they people we can confide in without being judged? Our culture also has its guidelines fairly clear. Some things are acceptable to share in public, some things better remain quiet. And then comes our personal morality – what we deem as right and wrong. That pinches us the most.
There are consequences to sharing our secrets openly. Some things, no-one can find out. They feel the heaviest of all. Some others are a bit less heavy. They can be shared with one person, maybe two. But others cannot know. Because of these consequences to letting the truth out, we begin to lie. Lies and secrets are like shapeshifters – they take the form of each other whenever necessary. We lie to ourselves and the world, in yet another attempt to protect a story that cannot slip out. The cost of a secret getting out can be minuscule or massive, depending on who and how many people it affects. Some people would be offended by it. They’ll say a few angry words, and move on with their lives. While some lives would turn upside down if the truth comes out. The true gravity of a secret can only be judged by the ones affected by it. There’s a good chance that the person keeping the secret might not be rational about it. They’re too close to the story and therefore, biased, with a degree of self-servitude. Under the guise of protecting others, they are also protecting themselves.
Keeping secrets is not a bad thing of course. It can be a means of survival. If it causes more harm than good, some things are better left a secret. If keeping a secret can protect someone you love or it can prevent a lot of hurt, it is a worthy burden to bear. It is almost a kindness on someone. Secrets reveal a lot about the self too. We can learn about parts of ourselves no-one else sees.
But if the whispers in your head tell you that you’re hurting yourself, and/or others by not letting it out, think again. Why are you holding back? What is the real cost of being relieved from it? If it is going to come out sooner or later, why not get it over with and prevent further harm?
The idea isn’t to keep or reveal a secret. It is to know why you think what you think. To question the origins of every thought and check if the old reasons still apply. If not, what needs to change? We hear a lot of over-my-dead-body-s and until-my-last-breath-s when it comes to secrets. But it doesn’t have to be that way. People change, culture evolves, rules transform. Why can’t our secrets?
Psst. Here’s a secret. The world is full of empathetic confidantes. We don’t need to hide and hold our secrets alone. There is a strange but profound freedom and safety in company.
And until you find yours, there are always shrinks.