Dear Ian,

We were having a meal at McDonald’s today, and you started to write something on a piece of paper. Your 弟弟 naturally wanted to know what you wrote and you decided not to share it with him. That, of course created a knee jerk response from your 弟弟 and he also retorted by not wanting to share a hypothetical secret with you.

It was a time for a discussion.

This family works on a transparent basis, we don’t keep secrets from one another. Sometimes we do, that is usually to surprise our loved ones. Between your mum and I, we mostly tell each other what is going on, you see this in our family day to day. There is a lot of things we don’t know in life and we learn by sharing our experiences with each other.

Growing up, personal spaces.

While I am aware that you are growing up and you need your own space and identity, I am still interested in your secrets. you can have every right to keep you secrets, secret. But by you writing them in front of us, and saying it is a secrets, simply don’t work well for our social setting. It is like telling the whole world you have a secret, and this, invites people to pry you open like a can of sardines.

Well, we all have our secrets, people don’t just go around telling people they have them, that is the irony of life.

So you can have your space to keep secrets, but don’t do it in front of a bunch of people, your family and then say that we are not privy to it. It is not a very nice thing to do, as secrets can hurt people, and secrets can hurt you.

Inner circle

Honestly, your little brother is very bad at keeping secrets; from us. We are very bad in keeping secrets from you boys too, this is because we are a very close knitted family and we are very transparent in our feelings. When you tell you 弟弟 a ‘secret, you can be sure that your mum and dad will learn about it, this is because for your 弟弟, we are part of his inner circle and we can be trusted with your secrets. He won’t be so kind and so open with his friends. You can be sure about that. Your 弟弟 loves and respects you, for you to tell him it is a secret, he will keep it with his life, but he will not keep your secret from us, this is because we have a high level of trust in this family. This might change in future, dependent on the ebb and flow of your brotherhood, but as of now, you are his big brother, and for a little brother, keeping secrets for a big brother is a big deal.

Your secrets reflects your confidence

The conversations and probing leads me to discover that you have a certain apprehension towards people’s reaction towards your ‘secret’ once they know about it. that tells me that you are not prepared for the eventual consequences of people coming to know about your secret.  There is a lack of confidences in dealing with the response, once people found out your secret.

I always tells people I am an ‘open’ book, and I behave like one. My friends knows me as a very transparent fellow, and I harbour no secrets. I do, in fact, keep secrets; we all do. I just do it in a manner like I don’t, so that I don’t invite curiosity, I hide my secrets, other people’s secrets in plain sight. That is the best way to hide secrets. that is the way you instill confidence in people to decide that you are trustworthy. The worst kept secrets are some of the best place to keep secrets, since your secrets are no secret.

Secret hurts

And the most important thing is, at your age, you still lack that maturity to decide what is ‘secret’ and what is not. You might be compelled by other stronger opinion leaders to keep secrets on their behalf, and those secrets can be criminal and illegal. You might want to impress upon others that you are trustworthy and helped these people keep their secrets, which will eventually hurts you and land you in trouble.

Right now as your Dad,, it is my job to discern those secrets with you. It can be quite a burden to hold custody to secrets, other people’s secrets. So I have to know them, help you carry them, and also give you resources to help you.

I cannot allow a secret to hurt you, and until I can see a maturity in you learning to keep the ‘right secrets’, please let us in and be there to know you and the secrets you keep.