While I offer a discreet service when it comes to guarding friends’ secrets, I have an almost physical inability to keep my thoughts and experiences to myself. It’s a bit live, laugh, love, but for me a problem shared really is a problem halved. There must be a reason so many people go to therapy! But when I really put my mind to it, it is true that there are subjects that I broach with certain friends and avoid with others — let alone strangers. 
 
An example of when I keep myself to myself is when guys try to chat me up. It disgusts me that some men will only leave you alone when you tell them you’re in a relationship. So I made the firm decision to never disclose this information under those circumstances. Mary Frances and Jane are right: I don’t owe these creeps anything.
 
On the flip side, I am reminded of a debate I had with a friend a few years ago, which got personal. Upset, he said to me, “You don’t know anything about me.” I found myself caught in a catch 22: If there’s something fundamental that I was missing, it was because he hadn’t told me, and if he had chosen not to tell me, then how am I to know?
 
Having been on the receiving end of this ouroboros of secrets (JK don’t @ me) this has become a piece of advice I dole out regularly: It is unfair to be angry with someone for something personal that they are unaware of. Whether you decide to disclose such information is entirely your prerogative — maybe the midst of an argument isn’t the right moment, maybe it’s simply none of their business. With the choice to tell or not to tell also comes a responsibility to let it go when necessary.
 
This morning, I listened with amused awe to an analysis of the sudden fall from grace of one of my favorite podcasts, Reply All. As the people discussing the drama speculated about what may or may not have gone on backstage, they kept using this phrase: We don’t know the full story. I found myself thinking that the people involved, those who were hurt and did the hurting, know the full story, and that’s good enough for me. The moral here? People will tell you what they need to tell you if and when the time is right.  AB

It’s hard for me to consider this question without thinking about how social media has ushered in an era of oversharing. Information is a complicated form of cultural currency: The more we give, the further out we’re able to cast our cyber nets, hoping to reel in a connection to worlds beyond the one directly in front of us. But what do we really get in return for sharing so much of who we are online? It’s no secret that in doing so, we become distracted. We’re lonelier, we’re less empathetic, we’re addicted to external validation. We’re allowing for the commodification of the most intimate parts of our identities for someone else’s financial gain. Is it worth surrendering this ownership over ourselves in exchange for... likes? 

In her book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Sherry Turkle introduces the chapter on solitude with the following phrase: I Share, Therefore I Am. She goes on to talk about the virtue of solitude — something that is often lost on those of us (myself included) who are perpetually plugged in, feeding our social networks with updates on our thoughts and feelings, our wins and losses, our moods and meals. 

I say this having just posted photos of myself and my cake from my lockdown birthday dinner (sorry to bring this up for the second newsletter in a row), so Turkle’s phrase is sounding a lot to me like the philosophical question we’ve all heard about that tree falling in the forest. If no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you baked the cake and didn’t document it for public consumption, did it really even happen? 

As I contemplate the barriers of my personal relationship with social media, I’m learning that I don’t want what matters most to me to be up for debate. I don’t want to experience the greatest highs and lows of my life with the intention of breaking it down into parts for someone else’s entertainment or approval. There’s tremendous power in not telling everybody everything — it’s a form of self-preservation. In the same way we can use a safe to protect things of material value, we can use our hearts to secure the stuff that’s emotionally precious. No one is entitled to that inner treasure but you, and real human connection happens when others are given access to it. This should be seen not as content to be shared, but as a gift to be cherished. AR