Collaboration to Keep Something Secret

Introduction

Keeping something secret often misinterprets as telling lie; as we engage in telling lie in order to hide something. Yet we do so, because when a friend shares something to us and requests to keep it secret means that he trusts us. In this essay, I would discuss a situation when I had to collaborate with my brother in order to keep his secret.

Discussion

Usually people keep secret in order to continue living peacefully. People share secrets with the closed ones, in order to reduce their stress and anxiety (Truth about Deception, 2012).

Once, I collaborated with my brother in keeping a secret that he was failed in his English course. Our parents were quite strict for our education, and all of our siblings have had a record of passing exams with flying colors. However, my younger brother got failed in his English exam due to his continuous involvement in the cricket practice.

I was surely, closest to my brother, in comparison to all the other siblings. We both trusted each other, used to spend most of the time together, and share our secrets as well. Besides this, our aims, likes and dislikes were also similar; in short, I would say that we had a perfect understanding. This understanding was the major reason that made me a part of secret in-group, and all the other family members, an out-group.

The major reason why we had to keep this secret was the dislike of our parents toward the involvement in extracurricular activities. They allowed my brother to join the school cricket team only with the condition that he would have to maintain his academic record. As he failed in the final exam, we were afraid that disclosing this to our parents would not let him continue playing. My brother could not afford to withdraw from the team, especially when the interschool tournament was about to start within a week.

I promised my brother to keep his secret from my parents and all the other family members; I felt that it was too hard. I strongly felt that holding secrecy is some poison which was continuously killing me from inside (Diamond, 2010; Nicholson, 2012). I was afraid of my parents that they would be angry on me because I was hiding from them, and favoring my brother. It was more probably that my parents would consider it as an unethical act, as since our childhood we knew well their opinion about sports and academics. They never preferred sports or any other extracurricular activity over regular academic education.

Our plan was that my brother would write an application to the school administration that he got failed because of his full time engagement with the school cricket team. In our school, it was a rule that students who fail in their academic performance, due to their extracurricular activities, they may appear for re exam. This opportunity was provided to the students who had a good previous record, and whose parents allowed them ...