Secrets & Lies

‘are… intimate secrets what make [people] the unique beings [we] love? No. What people keep secret is the most common, the most ordinary, the most prevalent thing, the same thing everyone has.’ Identity - Milan Kundera, pg. 97

Do we all have secrets in common? Why do we choose to keep secrets?

I keep secrets because I know I cannot admit something without revealing a dishonesty or hurting someone. I cannot tell the secret without exposing myself in a way that leaves me or others too vulnerable. I keep secrets to protect others from myself. So I have very few secrets because for me they are a bad thing. I have none from the people I love most.

Some people keep secrets for different reasons; some keep them because they are delicious: succulent, selfish pleasures. They create mystery, they satisfy a need to intrigue – they are a holding back. A tease. Having a secret can give you a thrill – can make you feel special, but why are you keeping it?

What makes it different from a lie? Where does the line fall between a secret we keep for pleasure [that we feel entitled to save for ourselves] and information we know we cannot pass on without incriminating ourselves? Sometimes they must be the same surely. So do we justify lying by calling it something else?

One can lie by omission. Holding back something we know to protect others from the truth. We reason that if we are not asked a direct question then it is not lying to not tell what we are not asked for. Is this a secret?For example if I am having an affair is my affair a secret that is mine to keep, a delicious, sexy secret knowledge or is it a lie to my husband? If he never asks me if I am sleeping with someone else can I pretend that it’s a secret to never tell him?

How many lies do you tell? How many secrets are you keeping? Or have you kept? And when you choose to tell someone a secret [which we nearly always do] what are you doing? You are decommissioning the knowledge, making it public – is this trusting someone or betraying yourself or possibly the others involved? What if the secret isn’t yours to tell? How well do you keep other people’s secrets – does it count if you know the have already told you?

When someone loves you and you love them does that grant them access to everything? Do you have to tell them your secrets? Or your lies?