Secrets

"Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact he possesses one."--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"How can we accept another to keep our secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves."--Francois de la Rochefoucauld

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows."--Robert Frost

I've been thinking about secrets lately.  Everyone holds them, but almost to a person, everyone has the compulsion to confess them to someone else.  Once someone shares a secret, that person can no longer claim sole ownership of the information and the secret loses any benefits it might convey to the owner. In my opinion, it is okay to have a secret or two, it's even healthy.  We all need something to have that completely belongs to us and no one else.  We all need to have little cores of truth about ourselves that no one else knows.  I consider it a reserve of sorts, impenetrable and secure, that one uses when utter devastation occurs.  It is that last ditch sense of self that can be called upon to rebuild oneself when all is lost.  Secrets can be a good thing if they are chosen wisely, carefully, and used sparingly.

"Everyone is like a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody."--Mark Twain

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other."--Charles Dickens

"His mind of man, a secret makes/I meet him with a start/he carries a circumference/in which I have no part."--Emily Dickinson