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Different Kinds of Revelation
Oct. 16th, 2008 09:53 amThe last few months have been intense for me on the personal-growth side, and one of the nicest revelations has been an odd one.
Secrets weigh a lot.
I know this is not a new revelation to most humans, and it shows up in literature all the time, but I never got a sense for it before. By the time I was an adolescent, my life had been so loaded down with family secrets that I didn't really notice the weight of one more. Much of my journey over the last year has involved letting go of these secrets. In many cases, any conceivable statute of limitations has passed on the legally actionable ones. In other cases, I no longer live at home or depend directly on my family's financial support (though I still benefit from it), and can afford to say or think things that I couldn't let myself say and think while I lived at home and was dependent.
It's been oddly freeing. I think for the first time I have a better insight into how young people who grow up in homes that make them hide their sexual orientation might feel on finally being able to announce it (that particular concept was never secret-ed at my home, so I couldn't quite grasp the shape of how it would feel to carry around that secret).
One of the particular burdens of secrets is that knowledge changes our perception of the world. Holding certain knowledge secret alienates you from other people by guaranteeing that your world view and theirs will not appear to align. This creates a feeling of isolation in the secret-holder (other people don't live in the world I live in) and a perception of distance and detachment among people who interact with the secret-holder. Another burden is that the weight of secrets distorts communication around those secrets, like gravity bending light. This makes it hard to talk about a range of issues that don't directly touch on the secret.
Secrets weigh a lot.
I know this is not a new revelation to most humans, and it shows up in literature all the time, but I never got a sense for it before. By the time I was an adolescent, my life had been so loaded down with family secrets that I didn't really notice the weight of one more. Much of my journey over the last year has involved letting go of these secrets. In many cases, any conceivable statute of limitations has passed on the legally actionable ones. In other cases, I no longer live at home or depend directly on my family's financial support (though I still benefit from it), and can afford to say or think things that I couldn't let myself say and think while I lived at home and was dependent.
It's been oddly freeing. I think for the first time I have a better insight into how young people who grow up in homes that make them hide their sexual orientation might feel on finally being able to announce it (that particular concept was never secret-ed at my home, so I couldn't quite grasp the shape of how it would feel to carry around that secret).
One of the particular burdens of secrets is that knowledge changes our perception of the world. Holding certain knowledge secret alienates you from other people by guaranteeing that your world view and theirs will not appear to align. This creates a feeling of isolation in the secret-holder (other people don't live in the world I live in) and a perception of distance and detachment among people who interact with the secret-holder. Another burden is that the weight of secrets distorts communication around those secrets, like gravity bending light. This makes it hard to talk about a range of issues that don't directly touch on the secret.
