This is the last card in the section labeled “Self-Direction.” And honestly? I have big feelings about it.

None of my five chosen values were found in this “Self-Direction” section. And having taken some time to reflect on them, I think that fact checks out. I am not a very private person. I am happiest when I’m a part of a larger whole.

There is nothing—nothing—I can readily think of that I wouldn’t discuss with a friend if it seemed beneficial.

Sex, poop, money. I’ll open up and be honest with you if you need me, and I’ll do it with a happy heart.

So it’s hard to write about privacy because it’s not really a language I speak very well.

But again, I am led to think of others. Do I think people should have the right to a personal, private sphere? I do. Very much. I can keep someone else’s confidence.

But I think “privacy” is often used as a code word for “secrecy.” And that gets very sticky for me. Secrets are, in my experience, like TNT. They are powerful, they build pressure, and eventually, they explode.

I’ve carried secrets. Things I’ve done or said that make me ashamed now. When I was young, I stole. Once, I stole a KitKat bar. My parents drove me back to the store to confess. I was humiliated.

Once, I stole $250 from a friend. I just picked up his debit card off the counter, walked to the ATM, and took it. He trusted me enough that I knew his PIN. Here is the kicker: It was the friend who would eventually set me on my coffee path. We laugh about it now (he got his money back), but it was a core betrayal.

The betrayal wasn’t just the theft; it was the secrecy. It was the hiding. That is the toxic side of privacy.

The most toxic elements in my marriage, without question or hesitation have been the moments when I’ve had a secret and not shared it with my wife. I am ashamed that it’s happened at all, and it’s taught me what I said before—secrecy is like TNT, building pressure, getting ready to blow up in my face.

But certainly there is another side. Sometimes, privacy isn’t about hiding a crime. It’s about the right to be unobserved. It is the right to be “unfinished.” To have a bad haircut, or a weird thought, or a clumsy moment that belongs only to you, and not to the public record.

I carry a unique benefit that my children do not have: I remember when life could disappear. When it just did disappear. What if my stealing from a friend was available for viewing on YouTube?

When I was 21, the home I grew up in burned to the ground. I was away at the time at forestry school discovering that I didn’t like mensuration, so I had a few belongings with me. But everything else—everything my family owned—went up in a puff of smoke.

My Dad said it took ten minutes for the whole place to fall in on itself. He was working in the barn. The UPS man discovered it while my dad was working in the barn. He came tearing up the driveway, honking his horn.

They sat there in the ditch together and watched it all burn. I imagine them weeping and I imagine the UPS man holding my father tenderly as he watched everything go, (I do not know that that happened, I only hope it happened).

Dad’s wedding ring. The tank of goldfish my mom and I kept. The game closet. The antiques. The new furniture my parents had finally purchased for themselves. And every printed photograph of my entire childhood. Gone in a moment.

My childhood is now known only in my memory, and in the stories we tell. There are precious few existent photographs to even prove I’m not a Highlander. To prove that I had a killer bowl-cut.

The fire and the bowl-cut were both tragic in their own ways. But they were also private. Big chunks of my history were erased. I was given a sort of a clean slate, whether I wanted it or not. I used to bleach my hair until it was wispy and white and corpse-like. And then I’d mix kool-aid with KY-Jelly and use that to dye it multiple colors. You’ll never see that. It doesn’t even exist anymore. Maybe a 4x6 photo in some former youth grouper’s scrap book? Somewhere? But you’ll never see it.

I watch my children growing up now, and I realize they will never know that kind of impermanence. Most of what is important is stored digitally now. Files, documents, photographs, and hundreds of video clips of them riding bicycles are all on the internet. They are on my phone, on my laptop, on your laptop. I think about what I’d take out of the house with sixty seconds’ notice. I believe I’d get my family and my dogs outta here and call it a loss.

Every move my children make, every bad haircut, every poorly chosen outfit is potentially braided into the foreverness of the internet. Their “house” can never burn down in the same way. The record is potentially permanent.

My kids are affected by the weight of that potential. I think it interferes with their sense of self-direction. How can you figure out who you are if the audience never leaves the room?

So, while I am an open book—while I will tell you about my theft and my shame, my poop or my money—I am realizing that Privacy is a form of grace. It is the grace of the unrecorded moment. It is the freedom to make a mistake, to be unfinished, and to let it drift away like smoke from a burning trailer house, rather than being stored in the cloud forever. It’s the reason I try not to mention their names or show their faces on the internet.

We need the right to be unobserved. Because a seed needs a little darkness to sprout.

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