Death

Secrets

By Stephanie Adu

“Can you keep a secret?” A simple question that all of us will be asked or have been asked at some time or another in our lives. Depending on whether the answer is yes or no that could lead to many different consequences. Secrets are often easy to share and come with little to no hassle, personal secrets that we keep to ourselves or harmless secrets between a close friend or a family member. However, in a lot of cases, especially with those friends and relatives, secrecy can end up being rather negative.

Personally, I have found that honesty and openness are the best ways to go in any sort of relationship as secrets can lead to a breakdown of trust. I’ve had friend who went behind my back, said awful things about me, kept things from me all under false pretense of being real friends. When I finally confronted them after learning all these things, the resulting argument ultimately led to the termination of a friendship that had lasted for six years. This is a clear example of the negative side of keeping secrets.

The trouble with keeping and sharing secrets is that you can never be fully sure of the intentions of your confidant. We’ve seen it in movies where the ‘villain’ under false guise gets a character to divulge secrets to them which are then used as a weapon of manipulation to get the character to do what the villain wants. Even in the relatable relationship between a brother and sister for instance, blackmail is rampant. Secrets are shared and promptly threatened to be exposed with a taunting “Do it or else I’ll tell mum.”. There is an almost riskiness to keeping secrets but that doesn’t repel us from doing it anyways.

In Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’, King Claudius calls his secret – that he kills his brother – a ‘heavy’ burden. This rings true in the case of a lot of secrets. A lot of the time, secrets tend to weigh down on the conscience of a person and if it’s a particularly serious secret, it can cause the ‘secret-keeper’ a lot of distress. They are constantly being taunted and tormented – for lack of a better word – by their own ‘tattle-tale heart’. Though it seems impossible, I believe it would serve us better to try and keep fewer secrets. A person’s life is filled with so many other uncertainties, obstacles, problems that it is best secrets be avoided by, as aforementioned, being honest and open.

Of course, secrets seem to be deemed favorable because they can remove a person from a stick situation in the moment. However, they can lead to other things down the line as a secret is merely a mistruth and in some cases, a lie. Just because a secret does good at a certain point in time, can it really be justified? In cases concerning the law for example, a stubborn individual, adamant to keep their information secret, can hinder or slow down an important investigation by withholding this vital intel. A well-known celebrity’s career could suffer dramatically if any of their ‘dark’ personal secrets are revealed. A more identifiable example would be of a student being horribly bullied and keeping it from everyone else in their life. We are very aware especially in this day and age, that this particular instance can lead to serious mental or psychological issues and in some cases, fatal consequences. So whilst it may appear that secrets do good, it is apparent that often the effects tend to be more unpleasant.

The question now is why do we as human beings vehemently insist on keeping so many secrets? Is it because we’re looking for a quick break from trouble? Is it because we have insecurities? We can’t know for sure exactly why we do it but we can only try and figure it out. In my opinion, we do it because sometimes we just want to have something for ourselves or something to use to our advantage, to give us the upper-hand, to massage the survival instinct in us that makes us human. We feel as though we have an edge, a leg to stand on and like we can’t have the rug pulled out from underneath our feet. The truth of the matter is despite I do believe that secrets generally turn out bad, but on deeper reflection I can also acknowledge why people see the ardent need to keep them. Maybe the issue with secrets doesn’t lie with secrets themselves but rather emphasis should be put on more truth between people which could eradicate the worst of secrets. All in all, at the end of the day the decision and perhaps responsibility, to keep and share secrets falls into the hands of the individual. the mainly negative role secrets play in our lives, in some ways we still need them to go on. Certain issues, especially those pertaining to our innermost thoughts or our private lives are sometimes best kept secret.