How to tell a good secret
Is it wrong to keep the truth to yourself? Usually, but
it can also make finally sharing the best news even sweeter.
By CARLA GUNN Thursday, November 4, 2004
Page A28, Facts and Arguments, Globe and Mail
I rarely keep secrets. I'd tell you my age if you asked, and my weight, too, for that matter. (I have a secret. My children know. But they don't know it's a secret, so they haven't bothered to mention it to anyone.)
My weight, by the way, is not my fault. People keep giving me pies. Like the Sirens, they sweetly sing to me. But unlike Odysseus, I am weak. On my birthday, I ate two. The next week I went shopping and tried on a dress I couldn't get back out of. I stood there helpless, arms pinned to my sides, like a fly in a spider's web, trapped in a dress. In those agonizing minutes, I considered my options: I could strain against the dress until it tore, or I could endure the humiliation of asking the only other person -- the male shop owner -- to haul the dress back up over my head. I chose the former. (It's not that I've won a trip to a weight-loss spa.)
However, I would agree that, for the sake of others, some things should be kept secret. For instance, when you think someone's house stinks and then you accidentally come upon their cat's litter box, you shouldn't run to that person shouting, "Hey! Hey! I found out why your house stinks!" And you shouldn't inform your teacher that after 180 days of school, your brain is finally empty.
Other things should be kept secret for your own good. For example, if you get pulled over for speeding, you shouldn't tell the officer that you also ran a red light. And it may not be wise to comment to your boss that you're looking for a better job -- one where you don't have to work day in and day out with a pack of life-sucking trolls -- until after you've found a new one. (No, I wasn't fired.)
On the other hand, there are times when keeping a secret is a soft way of lying. For instance, if you lose your tooth and then really lose it in on the floor of your grandmother's kitchen, you shouldn't keep this a secret from the tooth fairy by scouring the driveway for a tooth-shaped rock, painting it white, placing it under your pillow and asking your mother not to tell.
Then there's the kind of secrecy that is really a form of passive aggressiveness -- like picking up your husband's dirty underwear, neatly folding them and secretively putting them back into his drawer. (It's not that I've secretly hired a housekeeper.)
Other times, though, you may think someone is being secretive when it's really that they simply didn't think that what they know (but you don't know) is all that noteworthy. For instance, if an 11-year-old boy's female classmate flashes him on the playground and a male classmate lights a bottle of perfume which causes an explosion during lunch hour, and he doesn't tell his mother (but his best friend does), it may not be because he was being secretive -- it may be that there are so many strange happenings at middle school that those events were, well, rather uneventful. Similarly if a three-year-old accidentally knocks his mother's toothbrush into the toilet and doesn't tell her (because, he says, she didn't ask), it may not be because he was being secretive -- it may be that it just didn't seem all that important. (I am not pregnant.)
All this said, the primary reason I rarely keep secrets is that I've come to understand that they are largely disempowering. If it was a secret that the inside of my house can be best captured by the word "culch," and that the only useful purpose my iron serves is as a weight for the bathroom blind, then I run the risk of you finding me out. If I expected you to visit, I would expend a lot of energy running around cleaning my house to ensure my secret was safe. This would be energy that could be best spent on more productive tasks. So I'd have given my autonomy away -- I would be living for you and not for me. And if you discovered this secret, you would then know something about me that I didn't want you to know, and you could tell others my secret. You would have power over me. But by living transparently, that power is mine.
But occasionally keeping a secret can be gratifying. You can revel in the warmth of what you know before sharing with others. When I was pregnant with my first son, I largely kept it to myself for five months. Besides my husband, I told only every other stranger. I would let the words, "I'm going to have a baby" roll off my tongue while making idle chat with strangers at the grocery store or in line at the motor vehicle branch. I felt a thrill each and every time. I milked that secret for every bit of satisfaction it could give me before I revelled in that other kind satisfaction -- the kind that comes from sharing a secret with family and friends.
(And this is what I am doing now. This new secret is good, very good. I have shared it with a number of strangers. And my children know. But they don't know it's a secret, so they haven't bothered to mention it to anyone . . .)
Carla Gunn lives in Fredericton.
