My steady diet of murder mysteries in the last few months—yes, it is escapism, pure and simple—has led me to ponder secrets: the keeping of them, the revealing of them. A typical detective story praises the thorough work of a detective, who, if he or she is any good, “leaves no stone unturned” in the search for truth. That means, as Reine-Marie, wife of the famous Chief Inspector Gamache (Louise Penny’s main character), points out, when a murder is investigated, no family or personal or even political secret will remain hidden. All will be revealed. From embarrassing childhood nicknames to a surprising parentage, everything will become public, relevant to the case or not. 

In popular culture, in our day of the ascendancy of psychology and self-help, not to mention talk shows and group therapies, secrets are bad. Trauma must be talked about openly, skeletons shaken out of closets, family secrets exposed. No stone left unturned.

In literature, my chosen field, discovery is crucial. How many novels depend on the revelation of some long-kept secret? Most of them, I think. The important discovery may be the protagonist’s new awareness of his/her self-deception about something. The secret might be a long-term affair or a missing love-child or sibling. The possibilities are endless as are the consequences of the revelation, which are often far-reaching. Usually, though, authors make certain that the consequences, however dire, are worth the trouble. It’s almost always a good thing that the secret finally came out.

 The truth sets people free, it seems. Indeed, the Gospels record Jesus saying, “The truth will make you free” and the Apostle Paul wrote enthusiastically about the “mystery” that God had finally revealed to humankind. We are hard-wired to seek to know, and what is hidden or forbidden is thus sought all the more diligently.

 We are also hard-wired to live in community, to require the companionship of other people, not only for outward success but for inner wholeness. Thus, keeping secrets is difficult, if not impossible, and when it comes to keeping secrets for others—well, soap operas build their tangled plots on betrayed secrets!

Given what we have learned in the past decades about the deleterious effects of hidden trauma and denied PTSD, and given what we have seen in the dangers of denying huge historical sins like genocide and slavery, it seems perverse of me to question this widespread assumption that keeping secrets is unhealthy, bad—unless, of course, you’re a spy on behalf of your country.

            Nevertheless, I want to return to that metaphor of leaving no stone unturned. I’m intrigued by the literal details, which have long since been left behind in the usual manner of good metaphors as they become embedded in everyday language. What actually happens when you turn over a big stone? Unless it was placed there just yesterday, something lives there, a something that will be deeply disturbed by a sudden invasion of light and space. The insects or larvae or lizards or slugs now have their relatively short lives upset. They are changed by our observation and we may be changed by our seeing.

 Are we sure that’s always a good thing? The upended stone metaphor came to be, no doubt, because far too many of us, me included, are disgusted by the kinds of beings that live under rocks. Hence, the assumption that we should overturn rocks and get rid of the creepy-crawlies. Biologists would disagree. What lives under rocks is part of the ecology just as much as what lives around and on the rocks. We need those various species that grow in the dark.

 So I’m wondering now if sometimes not knowing might be a better, healthier option. Privacy in our day is rapidly becoming rarer. All manner of trivial detail and once-private information is now broadcast online to friends and strangers alike. I think that has changed us all and not necessarily for the better. And that’s just the personal information that we choose to share.

 What about the private information that we didn’t choose to make public? The info we submitted to private or government organizations so we could access their services and that has been snatched through a data breach. The info that we never chose to share at all but that was “harvested” in various nefarious ways. Surveillance takes many forms in these days, from the sneaky collection of our data through our shopping habits via rewards programs to the outright spying through ubiquitous cameras. It seems that the all-consuming profit motive truly leaves no stone unturned in the pursuit of our dollars—and our attention. Because in the online world our attention can be monetized. No, let me amend that statement: our attention is almost always monetized.

            (And I am aware of the irony that while I do not pay anyone for the privilege of posting this blog, my readers are subject to ads that yell for your attention. I’m sorry about that.)

 I want to return to the secrets that we can still choose to keep secret, or not: the private stories that cause us pain, the ugly habits that we’d like to get rid of and can’t, the corrosive feelings that would cause so much hurt if exposed to the light. Is it always true that it is better to reveal all? Aren’t there times when outward courtesy and discretion can lead, in time, to a change within, so that the inhabitants under the rock have become part of the earth that supports life?  

            In Louise Penny’s The Madness of Crowds, as Reine-Marie Gamache goes through boxes of documents and keep-sakes left behind after a death, she discovers truths about a mother that her children have never known. On the verge of revealing their mother’s awful experiences, Reine-Marie chooses instead to allow the adult children to keep their memories of a loving mother. No good would have followed from the knowledge of what their mother had endured. The secret remains. The stone, unturned, contributes its share to an ecology that fosters more caring, not less.

“On earth, if God is good, you can sometimes forgive a few things long enough so you don’t have to drag them after you all the way into heaven before the Throne of Grace. And anyway, . . . God already knows. God understands it all, why should we turn over and over in our hearts the little we know and the more we don’t? Let it rest in the sand, there’s enough sand for all of us here. ” (Rudy Wiebe in Sweeter Than All the World)