‘3 words that fascinate me’ By Harshali Singh

Mulling Over The Mundane

In the English language, three powerful words fascinate me. 

1. The first is Love- I live, observe and absorb this word and write a lot about it. It enthrals me, its connotations, consequences, and how different people flourish or flounder in its presence and absence. Inevitably it finds itself as the star ingredient in my writings. The sweet, innocent and charming and also the mature, complex and conflicted. The multi- faceted to the one-sided, familial and also self-love. 

For me, love is a word that cannot be validated except by the people experiencing it at that moment. Just like snowflakes, every kind of love is different, mystical, transient and yet everlasting.

2. The second is the word Free– Nothing in life is free when I am the one receiving it. I don’t remember how but this realization was very much part of my personality since the time I could relate words to experiences. Is that a cynical way to look at life? 

Maybe.

I’ve been told that I am jaded several times, but it is a word that has held me in good stead to date. It has kept me from taking anything for granted. From friendships to family, from work to play, the inner dialogue is about what I will have to give back. Gratitude and boundaries have been the positives, whereas the negative aspect is constantly checking for unfulfilled expectations of everyone around me.

3. And the most powerful one – Secrets. 

The average person is keeping 13 secrets right now. Five of them are secrets they’ve never told another living soul. 

These stats come from a new paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which looked at more than 13,000 secrets over 10 different studies. 

If I think about it at this moment, the number of secrets I am currently holding goes way beyond 13. We all are secret keepers for others and ourselves. As we grow and evolve, we let loose of some that our friends have outgrown and hold the others tighter still. We share some not knowing the ripples it could cause and add new ones as we traverse through life. But what entails this mysterious word? Is it the idea or the context of the secret itself that causes excitement? Is it the power that it affords us or the knowledge that someone trusts us to hand over this power to us? Is it a humbling experience or a gratifying one?  The reasons and questions baffle, animate and fascinate me endlessly. 

I’ve observed women respond positively to self-disclosure finding it easier to forgive the confessor since now there is no more fear of a social cost by the information revealed.  

More interestingly, what would make one trust someone to share the most embarrassing or hurtful incidents or their wrongdoings. We’ve all done it, shared our skeletons with someone who told it to their closest group of friends or friends, and before you know it, everyone is everyone’s friend. 

We’ve all also regretted telling someone our secret and lived out the consequences for trusting the wrong person. And we’ve also retaken that leap of faith, forgetting the hurt, the betrayal, loose tongues caused us. 

So, why do we do it, trust people again and again? Is it to give ourselves the chance to find a person who will be our secret keeper, or is it to share responsibility by confessing to another? 

A universal human phenomenon, secrets- the sharing and the keeping of them, can be a double-edged sword. Where on the one hand, it strengthens your bond; one can also feel weighed down by the burden at times. 

Whatever else it may be, it is without a doubt a shared experience between the secret giver and the secret keeper who is charged to guard it. 

For me, that is enough.