Sharing Secrets

by Josh Kiel

In the course of life we accumulate a set of experiences that shape the way we interpret our lives. When interacting with each other we use these experiences to relate.  We build understanding through our shared relationships. At the same time, there are some things that we keep entirely to ourselves. Secrets, those experiences which we’d rather not share and that we’d rather not have others know we’ve experienced at all. 

I’m of the opinion that we can’t ever fully understand another human being. Since we’re all unique individuals it is absurdly hard to come close to a full understanding of each other. This often leads to a sense of loneliness stemming from the knowledge that we neither can understand another or be fully understood. If that statement depresses you, I’ve included a picture of a puppy.

Part of my weekly routine includes a visit to the PostSecret website which offers the opportunity to momentarily, but profoundly bridge that gap of understanding between myself and individuals I have never and will never meet. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with PostSecret, it’s essentially a community art project where people decorate and mail a postcard containing one of their secrets to organizer Frank Warren of Maryland who puts them up on his site for the entire world to see and consume. Suffice to say, I'm a fan. 

On this one site I can view other peoples interpretations of life events they have not been comfortable sharing with those closest to them and it gives me a slight approximation to the emotional experience that they must have felt. The most powerful moments come when I read secrets that I identify with so strongly that I might as well have written them. In essence, they are my secrets experienced in some form or manner by another human being. Whether the subject matter is funny or sad, shallow or profound, there is something powerful in seeing someones innermost thoughts put on display after being hidden from all others.

For many people, myself included, there is a hazy line in differentiating whether we hide our secrets or whether our secrets hide us. Often in order for me to share a secret, a real secret, I need to have a half dozen beers in my system and even then the sharing is very calculated. 

To so many of us our secrets are sacred. They are the parts of our lives that we'd rather not have define us, but do anyways. From my own experience they are laden with regret and embarrassment that I expect would elicit a negative reaction from the people that I know. Basically secrets create a prison made out of the expected reactions of others, we bind ourselves in based on our expectation of their judgment.

When a secret is finally shared it can be liberating. From my own experience what I seek in sharing secrets is two-fold: first, to no longer carry that secret by myself and second, validation that I am not alone as a flawed human being. PostSecret allows me the second half of that experience with no risk to myself. 

In viewing a few dozen secrets of strangers each week I inevitably find a few secrets to which I fundamentally identify. In that moment there is an understanding and connection with another human being that I cannot deny. I know that I am not only validated, but so are they and if that particular secret is validated then there's the probability that my other secrets are too. 

At the end of the day it serves to quell my angst that in experience as a human being trying to find my way through this world I have not made myself irredeemably flawed to the point that another person could not understand me.


When I'm done looking through the secrets on the site for a given week I often feel relief. It serves as an exercise in empathy both towards myself and towards others which reminds me that while we don't always understand each other completely, there are still people out there who can understand and identify with my specific emotions and experiences that we process. 

This helps me feel more connected not only to anonymous people on the internet, but also to the people in my own life who probably have the same secrets as me, but try and hide them as much as I hide mine. It also makes me wonder how well we could understand each other if we'd just be honest with each other. Now if only I were artistic enough to create a handmade postcard...

Why I Love Happily Ever After and Why I Need Something Else

by Ben Howard

Recently, as both a massive surprise to myself and with great loss of personal dignity, I developed a love of the TV show The Bachelorette. Granted, I only watched two episodes, but those two episodes, like crack, were more than enough to guarantee addiction.

In my defense, a significant amount of my enjoyment is ironic. I mean what other show can support so many cliche story lines that it spawns both a drinking game and a fantasy league. At the same time, I actually felt a little emotional when quasi-Mormon Jeff With One F proposed to Emily the Blonde. Against my own expectations I had actually invested emotionally in their relationship. I like them. I hope they end up living happily ever after.

It's easy to mock a show like the Bachelor or the Bachelorette. It's easy to point out the insanity of trying to find your “soul mate” on a nationally televised game show. It's easy to be cynical, but I'm not convinced that the cynicism is warranted. At least not all of it.

At its core, the show provides a proxy for both our deepest desire and our deepest fear. We want to be loved, but we're afraid that we'll end up alone. It's the same core that spurs the success of paint-by-numbers romantic comedies. We want to hear the story again because we want the story to be real. We want the story to part of us. A show like this serves a purpose.

I've always been a hopeless romantic. I love the Bachelorette for the same reason that I love When Harry Met Sally or Definitely, Maybe. They're aspirational how-to guides about finding profound happiness. They're fairy tales.

We need fairy tales. We need escape and we need dreams. Sometimes they even come true.

But we need other stories too or else we run the risk of fairy tales dominating our reality to the extent that we think of them as the rule and not the exception. We need stories that tell us that happily ever after is just the beginning. We need stories that show us that being single isn't synonymous with failure. We need stories that remind us that we don't have to be rich or successful to be valuable.

Churches need to learn how to tell these stories. Please note that I did not say anecdotes or illustrations. These are not points we need to prop up, but stories we need to embody. In order to lead healthy, fulfilling lives we need big, beautiful dreams, but we also need a deeply realized and beautiful reality.

I try my best to be honest here. I've told some of my friends that writing this blog is my form of therapy and this post is no less than that. I love the fairytale, but my pursuit of that fairytale has often left me feeling bitter and lonely.

There are two possible reasons for this. First, to quote from the movie High Fidelity, “Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives at the age of 26.” I am certainly of that disposition.

Secondly, and I think more profoundly, I have no idea what it looks like to be healthy, happy and single. It's not a story I'm familiar with, yet when I look at the Bible or Christian history it's quite apparent that this is a perfectly viable option.

I don't have a pithy point to wrap all this up. I love the stories we tell ourselves in popular culture, it's why I like writing about it, but at the same time I think we've gone too far. We know how to chase the dream, but it's become increasingly harder to live the reality. Here's to figuring it out.

Peace,

Ben

You can follow me on Twitter @BenHoward87 or leave a comment if you'd like to contact me.