Secrets
If you want to be cruel — to burn an innocent heart from the inside, to bury a soul under its own weight, bind it in secrecy. Burden it with a power it cannot share, knowledge it cannot teach, truth it cannot practise.
Secrets are dangerous not in being told, but in being kept.
Something so vulnerable and precious is a force meant to be reckoned, reconciled, released. Perhaps some secrets are too great to be unleashed in brazen entirety or in direct confidence, and those are scattered throughout time in legends, myths, masterpieces of art and poetry, littering each single experience with whispers and with shadows. The secrets and their remnants we may be blessed to encounter are not for us to harbour, but to share as we see fit:
when we share foolishly, they instruct us; when we share wisely, they enlighten others.
In life, we accumulate so many secrets — they settle under our skin. They imprison us in our own minds, trap us with our own wills. Sometimes such secrets efface our very desire to live, for being alive is no more than sharing secrets:
taking them on and letting them go.
For those who are truly living, there is no such thing as a secret, for to hear a whisper is to be whispered oneself. Being alive is standing on an ocean shore listening to the tide or marking the centre of a gust of wind or smiling quietly at a stranger’s conversation or holding the unshed tears of a close friend, inhaling the hushed morsels of existence and inserting ourselves in their place.
When we do this, we take the wind and give to it our being, and thus the burden of being is lightened for all. We cannot hold secrets dear, we can only hold them in vain. We are merely vessels after all:
filled so we may be emptied, emptied so we may be filled again.
Listen to Episode 116 — Acting, Home, and Climbing:
Written by Kaitlynn McRae of Comatose.
Comatose is a weekly series of amusing anecdotes, insightful commentary, and pithy stories. Every week three contributors are featured in short segments. The segments, though often unrelated, are tied together using music and narration to set the scene. Relax and enjoy the ride while listening to topics as varied as love, birthdays, and reciprocity.
You can find Comatose on Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, and Stitcher.
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