Why I thought of this song from the forgettable film, “Little Shop of Horrors” from 1986, the year of my graduation from college, I’ll never know. As I have written previously, the free associations of my mind are indeed mysterious.
I ran into the CEO of my real estate company, Michael outside of the office one sunny afternoon last week. As we are prone to do, we delved into a discussion of other things besides real estate. He had just returned from listening to a speaker on a topic which now eludes me, but one thing he recalled really struck me, and I paraphrase: “As human beings, we can either feed our stories or stand on the truth.”
Over the last 3 years, I have had the privilege of hearing a lot of people’s stories, women’s in particular- some of them tragic, some hilarious, all fascinating. Stories really are the building blocks of our identity, but what I’ve learned is they can either limit or launch us. And some of our stories contain secrets, don’t they?
I watched yet another TED Talk recently entitled “Half a Million Secrets” in which Frank Warren, founder of PostSecret.com, tells of his “crazy” idea of randomly distributing 3,000 post cards to people in Washington, DC – on which they could anonymously share an “artful secret” and mail it back to him. His idea went internationally viral and has birthed a number of ventures which have “leveraged the kindness of strangers.”
Warren offers this: “Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking or silly or soulful. They can connect us with our deepest humanity or with people we’ll never meet.”
Here are two examples from hundreds of thousands he has received, which happen to be on opposite ends of the spectrum actually: one sent to him on, not a postcard but a torn Starbucks cup (clearly from a barista): “I give decaf to customers who are RUDE to me.” And another from an adoptee: “Dear Birthmother. I have great parents. I found love. I am happy.”
Warren concludes, “Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism playing out silently in the lives of people all around us, even now.”
That’s what I love about the process of building relationships – discovering people’s stories as well as their secrets when they allow themselves to be seen – really seen – that is.
Author Frederick Buechner writes the following about secrets which we immediately think of as the dark ones, i.e. “Things we did or failed to do that we have never managed to forgive ourselves for; fierce hungers that we have difficulty admitting even to ourselves; things that happened to us long ago too painful to speak of; doubts about our own worth as human beings, doubts about the people closest to us, about God if we believe in God; and fear – the fear of death, the fear of life.”
He goes on to suggest there are happy secrets, too and that all of them in fact “are the essence of what makes us ourselves. They are the rich loam out of which, for better or worse, grow the selves by which the world knows us. If we are ever to be free and whole, we must be free from their darkness and have their spell on us broken. If we are ever to see each other as we fully are, we must see by their light.”
We all have a story. I urge you to tell yours in the light of truth by whatever manner is comfortable, yet don’t “feed it” with the voices in your head that can poison it such as: you are not driven enough, smart enough, thin enough – no matter what a parent, teacher or culture may have told you.
Part of the process of “standing on the truth” might be bringing a secret – dark or happy – into the light. Share it with your dearest friend (or Frank Warren!), write it down in a private journal or whisper it to the One who already knows what it is. Become like a child, as scripture teaches, who simply cannot contain it, then trust that God has found you – with all your faults and foibles – worthy of His love.
Your secret and the shame that binds it may be insidiously derailing a relationship, compromising your physical health or keeping you from living the life you were designed to live. God’s shattering love and amazing grace breaks their spell, paving the way for you to become all you have not yet been…in a brand new story… on this earth and beyond.
And that, my friends, might just be the greatest “secret” of all.
– Caroline Watkins