Secrets
Secrets
October 16, 1991
A girlfriend of mine owes $2,000 to the bank on a check overdraft, and she hasn’t told her husband—she’s paying it off in secret. If I did that, it would burn a hold in my soul and my husband would smell the cinders a mile away. I’d have a scarlet V (for Visa) lit up like a ferris wheel at night on my breast.
A couple of weeks ago, at LDS General Conference, one of the speakers mentioned that we should keep certain thoughts and inspirations that we have secret or Satan would take that information and use it against us if we blab it everywhere. If you’re not LDS, that means that whenever you get a great idea and you blab it all over the place, it never works out. It’s a basic principle of life, even for non-Mormons.
There are two kinds of people: those who can keep secrets and those who can’t. There are two kinds of secrets: those you should tell and those you can’t. I’m out for both counts—I can’t and I don’t and I won’t. On the other hand, you could grill my husband alive and he wouldn’t tell you so much as his mother’s maiden name if he didn’t want to.
I tell people secrets because it fascinates me when I think of something secret. I love for people to know things. I like to tell them new ideas. That’s why I like to write this column.
My husband thinks you ought to wait before you fire your mouth off; he doesn’t think it’s necessary for anyone to know anything that passes through your mind. He’s one of those people on the stake high council who doesn’t come home and tell his wife which people got excommunicated.
He knows I would never keep it a secret that he told me.
I hate secrets. I like deep conversations and sharing thoughts. Everything seems so impersonal if you don’t tell your secrets. I like to show off when I get a great idea. I want to find out if others have the same idea.
But, the fact is, that things can get terrifically messed up if you tell people too much. If you’re married, you can wreck your relationship with your spouse by telling too much to your friends. It’s also a fact that we’re all different, and what may be right for one person may not be good fo another. By telling people private things you open yourself to their judgment which is based on their experience, not yours.
And what was said at conference is also true. When we fail to regard our own flashes of inspiration as sacred, they lose their worth to us. They become fodder for discussion instead of calls to action.
It’s important to reach a balance that gives us meaningful communication with friends and keeps our personal integrity intact. In our house, it’s either feast or famine: you can hear it ALL (and more) from me, or you can talk to my husband and wonder if anything ever happens to us at all.
So, I’ve devised a reward system for us both—only he doesn’t know this. It’s a secret. So, don’t tell.
Whenever keep my mouth shut for a whole week about something—I pick a little goal—I get to go to the mall and buy a book.
For getting him to talk, I’ve devised the Stop, Look and Listen Method of Marital Communication. First, I’ve stopped telling everybody everything that he tells me and telling him every thought I personally think. Sometimes I feel like my life is an open book test that I’m giving someone else. Hopefully, this will buildup his confidence in me so that I can get to part two.
For this, I try to actually look at him when he’s talking. This is calling Paying Attention, and it’s something I’m not very good at.
Third, I listen and then I’m nice and encouraging when he shares something with me—instead of my usually witty and sarcastic mode of response.
W.B. Yeats said; “We can make our mind so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
Frankly, being that quiet is a completely unrealistic goal for me, but it might work for you. I think if I can keep my mouth shut for just a couple of days at a time, I’ll be doing pretty good.
October 16, 1991
A girlfriend of mine owes $2,000 to the bank on a check overdraft, and she hasn’t told her husband—she’s paying it off in secret. If I did that, it would burn a hold in my soul and my husband would smell the cinders a mile away. I’d have a scarlet V (for Visa) lit up like a ferris wheel at night on my breast.
A couple of weeks ago, at LDS General Conference, one of the speakers mentioned that we should keep certain thoughts and inspirations that we have secret or Satan would take that information and use it against us if we blab it everywhere. If you’re not LDS, that means that whenever you get a great idea and you blab it all over the place, it never works out. It’s a basic principle of life, even for non-Mormons.
There are two kinds of people: those who can keep secrets and those who can’t. There are two kinds of secrets: those you should tell and those you can’t. I’m out for both counts—I can’t and I don’t and I won’t. On the other hand, you could grill my husband alive and he wouldn’t tell you so much as his mother’s maiden name if he didn’t want to.
I tell people secrets because it fascinates me when I think of something secret. I love for people to know things. I like to tell them new ideas. That’s why I like to write this column.
My husband thinks you ought to wait before you fire your mouth off; he doesn’t think it’s necessary for anyone to know anything that passes through your mind. He’s one of those people on the stake high council who doesn’t come home and tell his wife which people got excommunicated.
He knows I would never keep it a secret that he told me.
I hate secrets. I like deep conversations and sharing thoughts. Everything seems so impersonal if you don’t tell your secrets. I like to show off when I get a great idea. I want to find out if others have the same idea.
But, the fact is, that things can get terrifically messed up if you tell people too much. If you’re married, you can wreck your relationship with your spouse by telling too much to your friends. It’s also a fact that we’re all different, and what may be right for one person may not be good fo another. By telling people private things you open yourself to their judgment which is based on their experience, not yours.
And what was said at conference is also true. When we fail to regard our own flashes of inspiration as sacred, they lose their worth to us. They become fodder for discussion instead of calls to action.
It’s important to reach a balance that gives us meaningful communication with friends and keeps our personal integrity intact. In our house, it’s either feast or famine: you can hear it ALL (and more) from me, or you can talk to my husband and wonder if anything ever happens to us at all.
So, I’ve devised a reward system for us both—only he doesn’t know this. It’s a secret. So, don’t tell.
Whenever keep my mouth shut for a whole week about something—I pick a little goal—I get to go to the mall and buy a book.
For getting him to talk, I’ve devised the Stop, Look and Listen Method of Marital Communication. First, I’ve stopped telling everybody everything that he tells me and telling him every thought I personally think. Sometimes I feel like my life is an open book test that I’m giving someone else. Hopefully, this will buildup his confidence in me so that I can get to part two.
For this, I try to actually look at him when he’s talking. This is calling Paying Attention, and it’s something I’m not very good at.
Third, I listen and then I’m nice and encouraging when he shares something with me—instead of my usually witty and sarcastic mode of response.
W.B. Yeats said; “We can make our mind so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
Frankly, being that quiet is a completely unrealistic goal for me, but it might work for you. I think if I can keep my mouth shut for just a couple of days at a time, I’ll be doing pretty good.
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