Tell me what you want to hear
Something that will light those ears
Sick of all the insincere
I’m gonna give all my secrets away
This time, don’t need another perfect lie
Don’t care if critics ever jump in line
I’m gonna give all my secrets away

Secrets ~ One Republic

Secrets has to be truly one of my favourite songs of all time. I honestly don’t know why is that. Maybe it’s the violin backdrop which lends it an element of freshness a lot of songs didn’t have then and it stood out. The lyrical genius that is Ryan Tedder is also at his finest in this one.

The last line in the chorus, ‘I’m gonna give all my secrets away’ has to be one of the scariest things to say. How can one fully give all their secrets away?  Can we ever really? In an interview Stephen Colbert did with Charlie Rose, Charlie Rose started off by saying this:

“Lonely is nothing I’ve ever known. You could be alone but never lonely. When I’m alone, I find it a joyful time. At the same time, I’m anxious to be with people, with friends and sharing experiences,”

“You don’t want to just need ‘I need Charlie Rose time’?

“I do. That’s what I mean. I don’t mind being alone.”

“But you’re never lonely?”

“Never lonely.”

“Wow.”

After a slight interruption by the audience, Stephen proceeded with the following reply:

“I’m a very lonely person.”

“Are you really?”

“I do get lonely sometimes.”

“You feel depressed? You feel sad?”

“To be a human being is to be alone, I mean I have an awareness of my inability at times to connect with other people because I can’t say exactly what I mean. The inability to fully love another person is a form of loneliness”

“Are you incapable of fully loving another person?”

“I don’t know how to fully love another person because there’s always some part of me that I’m not sharing. There’s always some part of me I don’t know how to open up and give to another person. Even with the people I love the most.”

Just read over this again, ‘The inability to fully love another person is a form of loneliness,’. That’s some hard hitting stuff right there. The ‘some part of us’ can never share are our secrets. We know and feel it every time we talk to people. We can feel that we are not entirely there because only a part of us is connecting emotionally with the person. If our friends and family know our inner deepest stories, we feel more at ease to love the person. It is only when our hearts has revealed everything from its core and vice versa, only then can we fully love someone.

We have secrets because we are ashamed of our sins and mistakes. Some of us may have them because we are afraid of what will happen when other people know them. We are afraid of being judged and looked upon unkindly. I have them. You have them. The worst secrets though, are the ones that we keep from ourselves.

We don’t want to accept our past and our lingering questions. In a way, we are not fully capable of loving ourselves too because we are always running away from who we are. I think only when we accept ourselves for who we truly are, can we fully love other people too.

I should know because I struggle with that too.

The sharing of our secrets is a little like peeling of an onion. An onion consist of many layers and with each layer shed, we begin to see its true skin. With each layer shed, the tears may come along with it but so does the grace of healing.

Secrets. A conundrum, a mystery, a sense of intrigue, a sense of insincerity but more importantly, it is the very thing that stands between us and love.