Imagine a young married couple about to have their first child. One morning they decide that it would be best to hide their troublesome past from their children until they get old enough to understand. The risk being that young minds might want to emulate their parents without understanding the cost. Keeping secrets hurts, it is a burden, but such burdens are acceptable when they have a good purpose.

Time passes fast and before anyone can blink those young people waiting for their first child are now preparing for their last child to go to college. The need for keeping secrets has disappeared. Their children can never make the mistakes the parents once made. The purpose is gone.

To carry a heavy burden without purpose is toxic and degrading, and to come clean takes more effort the longer the burden has been carried. Insecurity pressures us to create a new purpose. Fanatics create purpose after purpose, with each one becoming more irrational; each one doing more damage to themselves and the people around them.