Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

Our final assignment for the Seeing Sideways class is to: "Tell a secret".

"Just PROMISE not to tell anyone else."
via this site

This assignment was inspired by the speech given by PostSecret's Frank Warren on TED recently; tomorrow we will have 3 minutes to tell a secret to the class. But this assignment bothered me--if you tell a secret, it's no longer a secret, right?

I started out by thinking of any secrets I have...and there aren't many. Any secrets I do have, though, I certainly wouldn't share with the class. So then I thought, maybe I can talk about the fundamentals of secrets--I questioned and answered myself with thoughts like:

• What is the value of a secret? Prevent pain, embarrassment, exclusion, loss of relationships
• Is it still a secret if you have told 1 person? 2 people? A room full of people? The internet? A secret ceases to be a secret once it is exposed.
• Why are we drawn to secrets? Know what others do not; leverage; gossip; curiosity

This interested me, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to talk about it all in 3 minutes. So I went back to the drawing board: I stared blankly at the "Tell a secret" prompt, repeating it over and over in my head. That's when I realized the emphasis "Tell A secret"--I realized that I can tell any secret, not just mine. I therefore thought about other people's secrets, and I found one that I have decided to talk about for this assignment--but I will only do so in class, not in my blog--it's still a secret, after all.

So stay tuned for tomorrow's class if you want to find out! I will say, though, that this person's secret involves an issue that is very close to my heart.

"Keep it secret. Keep it safe." - Gandalf | via this site