“Attempt to live a life with no secrets.”

Recently I was meeting with a mentor of mine and bemoaning the fact that I couldn’t quit all of the various addictions and habits that besieged me constantly. I’ve become a slave to sin. I wanted to stop so badly, and for over a decade I’ve been on the hunt for the magic bullet that will finally give me freedom.

I hoped my mentor would load it into the chamber. (Why is magic bullet a phrase? I don’t want to get shot! Why not magic hamburger?)

Well, he did serve me a magic hamburger, but not in the form I expected.

After hearing me wail about my issues for a few minutes, he asked why I wanted to quit so badly. Of course, the answer seemed obvious. Porn is bad. So quitting must be the highest priority. Or else God will be disappointed and my future family will fall apart.

Turned out that I didn’t have any deeply personal motives to quit. At best, I half-heartedly wanted to give up these things that actually felt good, but I also knew that I should, for my future wife and kids and my life and of course, my integrity.

At last, he gave me his secret sauce:

“Try to live a life with no secrets.”

That’s it? I thought. Even though it seemed too simple, it stuck with me. And as my brain chewed on it with its gray matter teeth the following days, I realized the brilliance of it.

Now, what it does not mean is: Live such a perfect life that there is nothing you need to hide from anyone. This is impossible and unattainable, unlike living a life with no secrets.

It also does not mean that you need to tell everyone everything. This would also be unhealthy. Not everyone needs to know every little detail of your life–especially the more personal bits.

But what it does mean is, there should be nothing in my life that at least one other person doesn’t know about.

Why is this?

Well for one, our shame thrives in the dark. The more things we have hidden, the more unhealthy we are, both emotionally and even physically, according to studies.

Not holding in all of our secrets frees us.

There were years where I would be nervous every time someone picked up my phone: what if they looked at the wrong folder or stumbled upon the wrong conversation in my messages? There was a constant anxiety and tension that accompanied holing onto so many secrets.

The thing about sharing your secrets, even the deep dark ones, is that they seem far bigger to you than anyone else. One teenage student came to me and confessed that he struggled with porn. It was evident that I was the first person he ever told, and he told me as much, and he was petrified. I’m not sure what he thought would happen upon his confession.

I said, “okay.”

And we began to discuss it and how we can work on it and try to team up to identify the roots of his struggle. It was such a non-issue, and a non-surprise to me that it didn’t affect my life, or how I perceived him in the slightest. Yet to him, it was this mountain of a burden on his back. Our own secrets always seem crushingly bigger to us than they ever will to others. (Of course I cared about it because it was affecting the life of a student of mine, and it was a big deal to him. But it didn’t change how I saw him at all. You get what I mean.)

Shame and addictions and all the rest thrives in isolation. There is nothing your shame wants more than to get you alone and keep you alone. It wants to stay hidden.

You can also think about it as practice for marriage. I’m single, but I don’t want to be the type of person sneaking around and keeping things from my wife when I’m married. Do I think I’ll magically become more honest or less secretive once I get married? Why not start practicing now?

Becoming an open person who doesn’t hide anything is not only a more honest and healthy way to live, but it helps to address the issue itself. The more you rob your shame of its power, the less you feel the compulsive need to act out and continue those same old bad habits.

So try it: See if you can go a week without keeping anything a secret. Of course, this also means no lying. And it doesn’t need to be with everyone: I have roughly 3 people in my life who know everything about me and my life. And they can always point me straight and be direct with me (something they could not do unless I was totally honest with them and held nothing back).

Give it a shot and let me know what you think!

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