Shared Secrets

Vulnerability, particularly the uninvited, is a terrifying place to hold oneself in.

We live in a world where everything has become reliant upon appearance. How one appears in the public eye, to potential employers or clients, friends old and new, prospective boyfriends or girlfriends and a million other people has allowed us—or perhaps forced us—to be extra selective about how and what we broadcast about ourselves. Why do we do this? To save ourselves from embarrassment.

We shove off personal questions, censor our online updates, or decorate the outside to hide the history of the inside. Or sometimes we share so much that it’s what’s not said that someone ought to listen to. 

Despite our best efforts, those things that we’d never dare share with another soul somehow reveal themselves without our permission.There’s the sadness that someone recognizes, if only because they’ve seen it within themselves…or the pronunciation slip that gives away your travels or former homes. There are the stories behind the ink and the absent parental unit.

To be called on those secrets can make the heart stop and it leaves only two choices: cop to them or lie your way out of them. Either way, it’s an unspoken trust that serves as antidote for the pain of baring more than you intended. You hope the other party carries your secret for you without so much as a word between the two of you.

To hold someone else’s darkness or trouble or embarrassment is a hefty responsibility and perhaps only one we can undertake with the knowledge that someone, somewhere might do the same for us in the future.

This is the October edition of the yoga studio newsletter.

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