Secret Pinboards

I am not yet on Pinterest. Well, I have an account, but I don't pin anything. It seems too intimidating, and Facebook alone wastes a lot of my time. But I know  a lot of people who really enjoy it, and I've definitely benefited from the crafts, recipes, jokes, and inspiring sayings my friends pin and use. When I have to cook for myself, I'll probably use Pinterest for the recipes. As of right now, my recipe repertoire is somewhere between the number of pieces of Halloween candy I have left in my stash and the number of classes I'm enrolled in. Which is to say, not many. 

Anyway, my friend Amanda has started talking about secret pinboards-- places where you can pin and nobody sees your pinnings. Ironically enough, she shares some of the things she's pinned on those boards. Some might say it's a contradiction. But I think it's the right way to live.

We have to share the secret things on our inner pinboards, the places we pin quiet hopes, deep disappointments, dreams we don't yet know how to articulate expect for an inexplicable feeling those dreams define who we are. Of course, we shouldn't share everything on the inner inboard; we don't want to overwhelm  people by oversharing. And some of the pins might hurt people's feelings, and others don't really belong on the inner pinboard so much as they belong on the "Things I've Thought About That Don't Define Me" board.

But the point is, a lot of the things on the secret pinboard deserve to be shared with at least some people, and they're far more interesting than the mundane things we tack to our outer pinboards, the way we present ourselves to the external world. I've learned that's something I need to work on. I need to keep asking people, gently, with love, about the things on their secret pinboards, and share more about what's on mine. That's the way Amanda's been doing it. I should follow her example. That's the way you get to know people. The way you build friendships that are meant to last a lifetime, not just a Marine Corps tour, and not just a college career.

So anybody who's reading this, ask me about my secret pinboard. And I'll try to ask you about yours.