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You might call it love at first refusal. About a year ago, I fell head over heels for a man who refused to tell me a secret. We were in the midst of a raucous party in a high-ceilinged, echoing loft, and had hit it off instantly. As the evening went on, the voices swelled around us, so we leaned in close to talk. Somewhere in our conversation, he’d mentioned something in passing that piqued my curiosity. I tried at first to ignore it, but in the end couldn’t resist and asked what I realize now was a presumptuous question given that we had known each other for just a few hours. He easily could have brushed off my question with a glib response or even lied. Instead, he told me, quite affably but in no uncertain terms, that the answer was private and that he was not going to answer my question, not there, not then.

I was immediately taken with him—but taken aback as well. I am nosy by nature—as a child, I was a shameless snoop, always looking for clues about people, before I understood the mystery of their private selves. As an adult, I seek permission for my curious questions and tend to get the green light more often than not. My dismay in that moment made me realize how rarely my prying is met with rejection. And it started me thinking about secrets more generally and the fact that we don’t keep enough of them.

As a culture, we have a tendency to share too much. At best, our tell-all tendencies are rooted in a rejection of the solitary suffering that some secrets cause—a quick perusal of postsecret.com demonstrates poignant moments of catharsis. At worst, though, we are a society saturated with secrets offered unbidden and to no one’s benefit: on reality TV programs, on confessional daytime talk shows, and in autobiographies by celebrities barely out of their teens. The question of quality aside, this vast quantity of unveiled secrets is creating a sort of fetishization of truth, as if experiences are made real by, and only have value in, their telling.

I can’t help but wonder what is lost with all these divulgences, with this disintegration of the boundary between what is private and what is public. Aren’t our private thoughts and experiences essentially what define us as individuals? It seems to me that our confessional culture, our habits of hyper-communication and self-revelation, are quietly chipping away at our very concept of a private life.

Simply put, I worry that we are giving too much of ourselves away. We only control our secrets, these private parts of ourselves, so long as we don’t speak them or put them in writing. Only in this context of absolute privacy are they wholly ours. In these private spaces, our experiences become most powerful because with reflection, we imbue them with meaning. Disclosing details of our private lives is an important way we come to know each other—when we share our secrets, we can create intimacy with someone we trust. But if we fail to first try to make sense of a secret for ourselves and instead quickly confide it, that intimacy is, at best, compromised.

I have a friend who narrates his life constantly via cell phone and e-mail. I know the rhythms of his workday—his lunch plans, his boss’s unreasonable requests. And I know the rhythms of his personal life: he forwards the tortured e-mails from his ex, replays for me the snarky voice-mail from a mutual friend, and sends me text messages while his date is in the bathroom. What is he signaling to me with all of this information? Are the stories he’s sharing worth the time he’s lost, the silent moments during which he might have had an epiphany, a second thought, or a few minutes of contemplation? These undigested divulgences haven’t helped me know my friend in a more intimate way. What’s more, I think something is lost to him in transferring his experiences so immediately from the private to the public domain before giving them a second thought. If he kept his secrets, even if only for a little while longer, might he understand his choices and his reactions more deeply?

My friend, like many of us, has also fallen victim to the lure of technology, which seduces us into habits of constant communication—into giving away our secrets too readily and in too raw a form. E-mail, cell phones, and instant messaging make it all too easy to share our thoughts and experiences in the heat of the moment, before we’ve had time to think twice. The immediacy and efficiency of these new mediums are wearing away our patience for second thoughts, our willingness to reflect on our own experiences and to allow others to do the same. I notice that I have an increasingly difficult time switching off my phone to sit with a struggle, to puzzle anything out in solitude.

What’s more, though our secrets and our private experiences define us, we also have the power to define them. And as soon as we share a secret, we sacrifice the discretion to define it. Once a secret has entered the public domain, we feel compelled to incorporate our confidante’s response and interpretation into our understanding of our own experience. Our secret—that experience or memory or tiny, titillating fact—is before us in rough paraphrase from someone else’s lips, and it is no longer solely ours. It is difficult enough that technology has transformed how we think of privacy and of the spaces that once were private—a solitary walk in the park or my house at midnight as I write: perhaps we should keep our secrets safe for longer in the truly private space of our own minds.

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that secrets are always best kept, or even that we always need to know what we feel before we speak. I don’t envision a world in which everything we say to each other is carefully rehearsed before it’s articulated, as in Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry as arising from “emotions recollected in tranquility.” What he describes first—“the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” sharing our raw emotions, transgressions, or rough ideas—is a beautiful way that we show ourselves to one another. I only suggest that we try to strike a balance and keep in mind the value of both kinds of communication.

Secrets are not simply facts withheld. Pieces of information as diverse as a social security number, a tremulous hope, or an illicit affair, are all secrets not just because their revelation, but their very existence, increases the secret keeper’s vulnerability in one way or another. Because of this, secrets can be powerful forces for isolating us, for connecting us, and for helping us make sense of our lives and our choices. This power of secrets, to both harm and help us, demands our respect and our careful consideration. As the poet William Stafford reminds us in “A ritual to read to each other,”

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes, no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

When we speak before thinking and share more of ourselves than we know we should, we devalue our own experience and miss an opportunity to make meaning of our lives on our own, before inviting others to weigh in. It is the care we take with our own privacy that gives secrets their value, both for our private understanding of ourselves, and the intimacy of those times when we confide in, or earn the confidence of, others.

In the end, my love-at-first-refusal relationship didn’t last. But that moment of being told “no,” of witnessing one man’s assertion of a private self in the midst of that raucous room, stuck with me. It has taken me some time to realize that moment’s significance in my memory and in our relationship: he knew then something I’m only just beginning to understand now—that secrets are a currency of sorts, and how we exchange them can help or hinder our self-awareness and affect the depth of our relationships. The trust that ultimately developed between us was stronger not only because of the secrets we shared, but also because of the ones we allowed each other to keep.

From the Spring/Summer 2007 “Secrets” issue

Commentary

Thank you, Jennifer. What an elegant essay about our precious privacy and the need to practice discretion to protect it. In this time of what I’m calling the Era of Unedited Egos, it is not only elegant writing but also essential reading.
Thanks to O.Hm for creating an Encore issue so this receives the second (or in my case, first) look it deserves. Terry

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 27 Oct at 03:27 PM

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Editorial Advisory Board: Tom Booth; Brian Doyle; Debra Gwartney; Julia Heydon; Guy Maynard; Win McCormack; Kathleen Dean Moore; Camela Raymond; Kate Sage; Rich Wandschneider; Dave Weich

Contributors

Eric Gold

Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and regular contributor to Oregon Humanities.

Kristy Athens

Kristy Athens’ nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, most recently High Desert Journal, Eclectic Flash, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Five Fishes Journal.

Rich Wandschneider

Rich Wandschneider was the founding director of Fishtrap, a literary nonprofit in eastern Oregon, and is now building the Alvin Josephy Library of Western History and Culture at Fishtrap. He writes a regular newspaper column and has written for the Oregonian, High Desert Journal, High Country News, and others. He is on the editorial advisory board of this magazine and on the board of directors for Oregon Humanities.

Ellen Santasiero

Ellen Santasiero is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Northwest Review, The Sun, Marlboro Review, Oregon Humanities, and in a recent anthology from the University of Oklahoma Press. She is at work on a memoir.

Caroline Cummins

Caroline Cummins is the managing editor of Culinate.com.

Jedidiah Chavez

Jedidiah Chavez is a visual artist and writer based in Portland. His work has been showcased in a variety of venues nationally and in the Pacific Northwest. Chavez was awarded a 2010 project grant by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Kristin Kaye

Kristin Kaye is a Portland-based writer. Her book, Iron Maidens, was an Oregon Book Awards finalist. She has recently completed her novel To Catch What Falls.

Lucy Burningham

Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. She holds a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.

Eric Gold

Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and former communications assistant at Oregon Humanities.

Sarah Gilbert

Sarah Gilbert is writing a book about mothers looking for emotional healing in food. In February, she decided to begin homeschooling her eldest son.

Courtney S. Campbell

Courtney S. Campbell is the Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University. You can try friending him through his Facebook page.

Barry Johnson

Barry Johnson has written about the arts since 1978 when he started writing about dance for the now-defunct Seattle Sun. He has edited arts sections at Willamette Week and The Oregonian, where he recently finished a twenty-six-year stint. You can find his up-to-the-minute thoughts on the arts at http://artsdispatch.blogspot.com.

Dionisia Morales

Dionisia Morales is a freelance writer and teaches writing at Linn-Benton Community College. Her essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in CAYLX, Brevity, Cream City Review, and Silk Road.

Wendy Willis

Wendy Willis is a poet, Conversation Project leader, and the executive director of the Policy Consensus Initiative and the deputy director for Research and Development at the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University. Her book of poems, Blood Sisters of the Republic, is forthcoming from Press 53 in fall 2012.

Carl Abbott

Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. A specialist on the history of cities, his recent books include Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West and Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People.

Monica Drake

Monica Drake is the author of Clown Girl (Hawthorne Books),which was optioned for film by Kristen Wiig. Her next novel, The Stud Book, is forthcoming from Hogarth Press in February 2013.

Tara Rae Miner

Tara Rae Miner is a writer and freelance writer and editor, former managing editor of Orion magazine, and author of Your Green Abode: A Practical Guide to a Sustainable Home. She lives with her family in Portland.

John Holloran

John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “After the Fall” (Spring 2011).

Rebecca Hartman

Rebecca Hartman is an associate professor of history at Eastern Oregon University. She received her PhD in history from Rutgers University in 2004. Her current research is focused on twentieth-century U.S. rural history.

Dmae Roberts

Dmae Roberts is an award-winning independent radio producer and writer based in Portland.

Jennifer Ruth

Jennifer Ruth is a professor of English literature at Portland State University and the author of Novel Professions, a book of literary criticism.

Richard J. Ellis

Richard J. Ellis is the Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics at Willamette University. In 2008 he was named Oregon Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and in 2007 he was chosen as Oregon Scientist of the Year by
the Oregon Academy of Science. His book The Development of the American Presidency is forthcoming from Routledge in January 2012.

Leigh van der Werff

After ten years in Oregon, Leigh van der Werff now lives in central California, where she runs a record store with her husband and their dog, Edgar. When she’s not at the shop, she’s writing essays and music criticism.

Joanne Mulcahy

Joanne Mulcahy teaches creative nonfiction and humanities classes at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, where she is codirector of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program. Her writing combines memoir and personal essay with ethnographic exploration. Her book Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz was published by Trinity University Press in 2010.

Marion Goldman

Marion Goldman has passed through the social worlds of Rajneeshees, Jesus People, and Nevada prostitutes. In her latest book, The American Soul Rush (forthcoming in December 2011), she describes how a small group of 1960s seekers at California’s Esalen Institute cultivated and spread spiritual alternatives ranging from transpersonal psychology to yoga to Zen golf. She is professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Oregon.

Guy Maynard

Oregon Humanities editorial advisory board member Guy Maynard is the editor of Oregon Quarterly, the magazine of the University of Oregon, and the author of The Risk of Being Ridiculous, a historical novel of love and revolution set in Boston in the the late 1960s, into which he managed to slip several Red Sox references. He lives in Eugene.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is an associate professor of religion and humanities at Reed College in Portland. He is the author of A History of Islam in America (from which this selection is excerpted) and Competing Visions of Islam in the United States. He was also a faculty member at the Oregon Humanities Teacher Institute in July 2011.

Tim DuRoche

Tim DuRoche is a writer, jazz musician, artist, and cultural advocate. He works as the director of programs for the World Affairs Council of Oregon. Tim hosts the The New Thing, a weekly jazz program on KMHD-89.1 FM in Portland, is currently developing a program on jazz and community values for Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, and is the author of the recently published collection of essays, Occasional Jazz Conjectures.

Walidah Imarisha

Walidah Imarisha is a founding editor of AWOL, a national political hip hop magazine and has toured nationally and internationally as part of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. She has taught in Portland State University’s Black studies department and leads three Conversation Project programs for Oregon Humanities on hip hop, the history of race in Oregon, and reenvisioning the prison system.

Kim Stafford

Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Elegant Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. This essay is a section from his book-in-progress, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do.

Debra Gwartney

Debra Gwartney is the author of the 2009 memoir Live Through This, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the PNBA award. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the West and the heritage of Narcissa Whitman, a project for which she received a research grant from the American Antiquarian Society. Debra lives on the McKenzie River with her husband, Barry Lopez, and is on the nonfiction faculty at Pacific University.

Susan Meyers

After growing up selling corndogs and cotton candy at carnivals up and down the West Coast, Susan Meyers extended her gypsy lifestyle by spending several years in Latin American before coming home to the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in CALYX, Dogwood, Terra Incognita, and The Minnesota Review, and it has been the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship. She teaches writing at Oregon State University.

Matthew Stadler

Matthew Stadler is a writer and editor in Portland. He writes about cities and urbanism for journals including Volume, Netherlands Architecture Bulletin, Domus, and Camerawork. His book about urbanism, Deventer, is forthcoming from 010 Uitgevrij, in Rotterdam. In 2009 he cofounded Publication Studio (http://www.publicationstudio.biz) in Portland.

Amanda Waldroupe

Amanda Waldroupe is a freelance journalist living in Portland. Whenever she fails, she buckles down and tries, tries again.

John Holloran

John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School, where he is the chair of the history department. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Under a Spell” (Summer 2009).

Todd Schwartz

Todd Schwartz is in reality a very serious and reserved person who divides his time between being a Calvinist minister and a funeral home director. Wait…wait! A funeral home director and a Calvinist minister walk into a bar…

Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. A new collection of his short fiction, Aftermath, is forthcoming from Hawthorne Books in Fall 2011. He teachers creative writing at Willamette University. His latest essay for Oregon Humanities was “Go Ahead and Look” (Spring 2010)

Courtenay Hameister

Courtenay Hameister is the host and head writer of LiveWire Radio, the co-creator of “Road House: The Play!,” a screenwriter and filmmaker. In her spare time, she likes to imagine what it would be like to have more spare time.

Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore is the author of seven books including Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), from which this selection is excerpted. She is also the founding editor of Hip Mama, and editor of the Lambda-award-winning anthology Portland Queer. She teaches creating writing online at the University of New Mexico and The Attic in Portland.

Jamie Passaro

Jamie Passaro lives in Eugene, where she is a freelance writer and an editor for Northwest Book Lovers, a blog produced by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Her last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Driving Mrs. Spacely” (Summer 2008).

Andrew Guest

Andrew Guest is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Portland. When not watching, playing, coaching or writing about soccer, he does research on youth developmental and educational experiences through sports, arts, and service activities.

David Bragdon

David Bragdon served on the Portland regional Metro Council for nearly twelve years and was elected president in 2002. The major accomplishment of his service was an expansion of the regional parks and natural areas network known as the Intertwine. He resigned from the Metro Council in September 2010 in order to accept New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s appointment as director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.

M. Allen Cunningham

M. Allen Cunningham is the author of Lost Son, a novel about the life of Rainer Maria Rilke. His first novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow was a #1 Booksense Pick and was shortlisted for the Booksense Book of the Year. He’s the recipient of an artist fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission and a Yaddo residency. His third novel, set partly in the Pacific Northwest, is forthcoming.

Bette Lynch Husted

Bette Lynch Husted lives and writes in Pendleton. She is the author of Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press, 2004) and At This Distance: Poems (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2010). Lessons from the Borderlands, her collection of memoir essays about teaching, class, gender, and race, is forthcoming from Plain View Press. She is a 2004 Oregon Book Award and WILLA finalist and was awarded a 2007 Oregon Arts Commission fellowship.

Bob Bussel

Bob Bussel is associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon. He has published numerous articles on labor history and contemporary labor issues, including a history of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. He is currently working on a book about working-class citizens.

Dave Weich

Dave Weich is the president of Sheepscot Creative. The Portland-based company fosters engaging and profitable communication among businesses, consumers, colleagues, and fans. Weich is on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.

Camela Raymond

Camela Raymond is a Portland-based writer whose work has appeared in Modern Painters, Plazm, the Oregonian, and elsewhere. She was previously an editor at Portland Monthly magazine and the founding editor/publisher of the Organ. She serves on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.

Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. He teaches creative writing at Willamette University.

Karen Karbo

Karen Karbo‘s three novels, as well as her Oregon Book Award–winning memoir, The Stuff of Life, have all been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent book is The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman.

Lisa Radon

Lisa Radon has written about art and design for Portland Spaces (as associate editor), Portland Monthly, Surface Design Journal, SHIFT (Japan), FLAUNT, Hyperallergic, and ultra (ultrapdx.com). She’s written a handful of catalog essays and is working on her first book.

R. Gregory Nokes

R. Gregory Nokes has worked as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press and the Oregonian. His reporting about this incident has resulted in a formal designation of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove. He lives in West Linn.

Christine Dupres

Christine Dupres is the former director of the Office of Sustainability and Community Engagement at the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland. She is a freelance writer and an Oregon Humanities board member.

Apricot Irving

Apricot Irving is a writer and radio producer whose most recent project, Boise Voices Neighborhood Oral History Project , brought together elders and youth in Northeast Portland. She has lived in Haiti, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom, but currently calls Portland home.

Lucy Burningham

Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. During the past decade, she has traveled on assignment for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. She holds a master’s in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.

Vicente Martinez

Vicente Martinez lives in Portland and works at a fast food restaurant.

Susan W. Hardwick

Susan W. Hardwick is a professor of geography at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on the geography of immigration, identity, and place in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration, and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This article is adapted from Hardwick’s Commonplace Lecture that she delivered for Oregon Humanities in 2007.

Sarah Gilbert

Sarah Gilbert is a writer and photographer who lives in Portland with her husband and three little boys. She writes about food and finance for several web sites, including DailyFinance, WalletPop and Culinate, is cofounder of the Portland parenting resource urbanMamas.com, and keeps a blog, cafemama.com.

Kevin Nute

Kevin Nute is a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of the American Institute of Architects award-winning monograph, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (1993) and Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (2004).

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author most recently of Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices, from One Day Hill Press in Melbourne, Australia.

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Don't Ask, Don't Tell

In praise of the private life

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