Secrets Buried With the Dead

Secrets will destroy us. Not all at once, mind you, but little by little. We hide them in the chambers of our hearts where we think they are locked away and have been forgotten about, but as they lurk in this dark place they are pulling tiny wires that connect to our every step and gesture and to every loved one we embrace. Each of our actions is affected by the secrets we keep, infused with a subconscious drive to set that secret free. And that’s the way secrets destroy us; if we don’t ultimately let them out, they will walk away with our lives and blot out who we might have become. I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t already know.

In the first ten years of this new millennium the race we call human has grown into a master race of secret-holders – our government agencies, our social system and our banks have all evolved into clandestine organisms. We may call it national security. We may call it the laws of capitalism. We may even call it individual privacy. But let’s call it what it is: it’s secrets running the show. A group of terrorists, working in secret brings down two buildings along with the nation where they stood, and that nation starts to drown in paranoia which leads to persecution which leads to more secrets. We grow a worldwide network of instantaneous access to people and ideas and instead of using it to unite the world, we use it to hide who we are through avatars and faceless chat and cybercrime that sequesters itself among the digital ones and zeros that now represent us. Banks with trillions in wealth that could have been used to save the sick, rebuild countries, and fill the bellies of every starving child, decide instead to use arcane financial plots that siphon every last drop of value out of our property and our people in order to build walls of money behind which these devious few can hide.

Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about secrets as this decade comes to close. Working on these pages over the past months has caused me to think about many of the little secrets I’ve kept across my life - things I’ve thought but never told; actions I’ve taken but have been too ashamed to admit. And that has lead me to think about the secrets and lies we tell ourselves as a nation.

Like most of us with strong ethnic origins (which is to say all of us) I have been taught well to keep secrets. It evolved from a murkier time, centuries past, when men and women could not talk about the baby they had out of wedlock, could not share the loaf of bread they stole to feed their children, could not speak their innermost thoughts for fear of having these pieces of news bring a village or a church or a kingdom down around them. Those days may be gone now, but the fear under our secrets lives on – justified or not, real or not, we continue to keep secrets because we think they are saving our lives.

But you and I both know that secrets take more lives than they save. The root of the most hideous national events of this past decade have all stemmed from the secrets we withheld from each other or the lies we told ourselves. If you don’t believe me ask the families of the victims of 911 or Hurricane Katrina or the Great Recession. There are more than a few secrets buried among the bodies of these dead and in the empty pockets of those who have been broken.

Our own personal secrets may not have the potential to kill millions or to send a middle class into poverty and the poor into despair. And our secrets might be nothing more than a piece of family history we decided not to share or something done to us that we’d rather not talk about. But if nothing else every secret we keep locked up is one less opportunity to teach others about us and one lost chance to reconcile with ourselves.

So tomorrow on New Year’s Day - along with your resolutions to quit smoking or lose weight - resolve to share a secret or a thought that you have hidden inside. Share it with your child or your wife or your lover or your parent. Do it because you’ll be surprised by the forgiveness you’ll be granted and the understanding you’ll receive. Let it out because by sharing small secrets with each other we might teach others how to share those bigger secrets that could stop the water from rising and the buildings from crumbling and our people from dying before their time.

And if you don’t want to share your secrets and thoughts with someone close to you, share them here with us as an anonymous comment. We’re all here to listen. Go ahead, share a secret with us.  Go ahead, I dare you.  Share it and start to change the world.