The Big Secret Nobody Wants To Tell by Bruce Muzik (Transcript)

When people asked me how I was doing, I’d say, “Hey, I’m fine. How are you” to prevent I am already discovering the deep resignation I had about my life.

Now around about that same time, during the transition from South Africa’s apartheid government to democracy, it became really have to be seen as what we called a New South African and a New African was somebody who was a liberal white South African who embraced the change. And I proudly wore the badge of being a New South African until one day a mentor of mine come up to me and he said, “Bruce, how many black friends do you have?”

And immediately I lied to him and said, “Three.” Because I couldn’t actually think of one.

He said, “You mean to say out of 58 million black people in this country, you only know three of them?”

And at that moment, it hit me what a hypocrite I was. Here I was wearing the liberal New South African badge when in fact I was still a racist. When my black house cleaner came to clean my house, I get really uncomfortable and couldn’t wait for her to leave.

When I leave my recording studio at night to go home and I saw black people loitering around the car, I’d wait in reception even for half an hour I had to until they left before I got into my car.

So I decided to do something about it.

I decided I was going to get to know my culture and conquer my fear of black people and I went to the house in the black ghetto called Gugulethu just outside Capetown, in an area called Cockyard which directly translated from afrikaans means the crap yard.

So imagine the scene, I’m driving down the street at 10 o’clock on a Monday morning two weeks later to move into this new house that I’ve never seen before. And the street is deserted except the two men sitting drinking beer on beer crates. And I open the door to my new house. I am thinking, “Wow, several steps down from the house I used to live in, right, which was that one. But I’m pretty grateful because I could have been living in that with no running water.

So I got out of my car to unload the boxes off my car. And as I do, a crowd started to gather around the car. I’m thinking oh, man – it must have been 10 to 15 black people standing there. And a woman comes forward to me and she says, Umlongo, what are you doing? Umlongo, means whitey in their local language which is called [kotta].

I said, “I’m moving in”. Now if there ever was a textbook picture for what the — like facial expression of confusion looked like, her face would have been in the book right then. You could have heard a pin drop as you translated this into [kotta]

And then one of my favorite African expressions for disbelief which is aaooo! And they were shaking their heads. I was even thinking you know, want to know what’s going on. She says, “Why are you moving in?”

Now at this point I’m thinking, things are going to go a lot smoother if I just kind of say, you know what I wanted to get to know my culture. So I came here to kind of get to know you guys for a bit. Please don’t hurt me. I’m not dangerous, right?

But I knew what would happen if I did. I would never conquer my fear of black people and I’d always be that hypocrite pretending to be liberal New South African.

So I took a deep breath and I said, “Well, I recently discovered I’m a racist and I’m terrified of black people and I’ve come here to conquer my fear.”

Total looks of disbelief all-round and more aaaoooo! I can see them thinking why this crazy white guy would a) even visit the Cockyard, b) rent a dilapidated house as the only white guy for five miles and then c) admitting I was a racist.

So the woman comes forward and she says, “Umlongo, can we help you carry your boxes into the house?”

I am thinking oh, no, no, they’re going to steal everything I own.

If I say no, they’re going to be offended and they might get upset, reject me from the community, maybe even kill me.

But in that moment, I caught my racial conditioning. This is the exact thing I’d come to conquer, to get past. So I said, “Sure. Why not?”

So one by one, they take the boxes off my car, load them into the house. Nothing of course gets stolen. Instead a party ensues like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

This is me on the right hand side drinking [Ung Abotti] and Ung Abotti, is an African beer brewed in paint cans that you drink out of paint cans, tastes disgusting. If you’re ever offered it, do not say yes.

But this party ensued like none I’d ever experienced. I was hugged, I was kissed. I was questioned. I was fed. I was poured alcohol and generally treated like a prodigal son returning home. The exact opposite experience of what I had been expecting.

And that evening I went to bed a little tired and a little drunk but I couldn’t sleep because I was kept awake by the sound of gunshots and the sound of police sirens and the sound of screams from the house next door. And I fully expected in every moment that something was going to beat on my door, steal everything I own and put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.

I woke at the next morning and obviously that hadn’t happened. So I went outside and did what everybody else did, which is going to take breakfast onto the street and eat in the street because in the Cockyard everything happens on the street.

And as I am eating, a little boy walks up to me with a back pack on his back on his way to school and he walks up to me, and as he sees me, he stops in this track and he looks up and he says, “Umlongo, you live here?”

I just kind of nod my head. And he looks on his feet again and he says two words I will never forget. He looks up at me and says, “Welcome home!”

And in that moment, 28 years of racial conditioning evaporated and took my numbness and resignation with it.

And then he walked off. That’s him.

After a month, I couldn’t leave. I ended up staying six months as the only white man for five miles amongst 100,000 black people in the Cockyard. And my life changed forever. Did my depression, and my numbness disappearing have anything to do with being a racist — who knows? But what I do know for sure is that when I started sharing the truth about who I really am, I could no longer present the mask to the world called, hey, I am fine and the numbness had nowhere to live anymore.

And today I have flown to Las Vegas to share with you what I’ve learned for the last nine years about what it takes to live a life filled with aliveness. So I’d like you to join me and taking a deep breath for a moment.

Thank you.

Let’s look at this concept of aliveness. I want you to consider that every one of us in this room right now in this moment has something we’re hiding about who we are, what we’ve done or how we feel – a secret that perhaps we’re too afraid to tell.

For me, nine years ago, it was being a racist. A friend of mine last week, she called me up and said she’d kissed another man and she hasn’t all the boyfriend yet.

And for you it might be something completely different big or small but whatever it is, if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that the secrets we hide have a devastating impact on my life. When we hide secrets, we’re forced to lie about who we are and we present ourselves to the world as something we’re not.

And when we do that for long enough, we lose touch with who we actually authentically are. And the aliveness that we once felt as children gets replaced by numbness.

Imagine you’ve got a hosepipe that’s twisted and you’re trying to water a garden. No water comes out. If you don’t untwist the hosepipe, the garden eventually wilts and dies, right?

Now your secrets act like a twist in the hosepipe that allows aliveness to flow through your life. And unless we untwist the hosepipe by exposing ourselves and sharing our secrets, will always live with some form of a garden that’s wilting, some form of numbness.

So let’s look at our life a little bit deeper.

If you think about it, if we were born to live, L-I-V-E, then surely being alive A-L-I-V-E is what it’s all about, right? The dictionary defines aliveness as having life, living, not dead or lifeless. It’s that feeling you get when you go up to somebody you really really really like and you’re always smart on a first date. How many of you guys know that feeling? Right, heart beating like crazy. It’s that feeling you get when you do an extreme sport, or when you take a risk or you do something that scares the living crap out of you, right?

It’s that feeling that most people attempting to buy when they come to Las Vegas to gamble money in the casino, that temporary rush of aliveness.

So if we’re born with this innate ability to experience being alive, how can we don’t experience it all the time, because we’ve become so good at looking outside of ourselves to get off fix of aliveness, that we’ve forgotten we can self-generate it in any moment.

We look from TV, we look to get it from the internet, from extreme sports, from sex, from drugs, from rock and roll, whatever it is. And as long as we’re looking outside of ourselves to get our fix of aliveness, it’s always going to be fleeting. Here one second, gone the next.

Joseph Campbell actually says that — he says, “We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value and we forget the inner value. The rapture that’s associated with being alive is what it’s all about.

So I want to share with you a story.

I got an email from a man recently. And he writes to me – I have written down this little piece of paper because I was never going to remember. He writes to me and he says, “Bruce, I have been married for 23 years and I have not made love to my wife in the last 18 years”. He says, “We have the outward appearance of a perfect marriage but I’m riddled with in a turmoil. I respect my wife but I’m too afraid to hurt her. So I continue in the marriage but feel like a fraud. I’ve never been faithful and I think I’m addicted to falling in love.” He is talking about that feeling of being alive he is addicted.

“I often think of suicide as my way out of my marriage. I realize I’ve pretty much lived the sham throughout my entire life for fear of being judged. Please help me.”

Now here is a smart aware man willing to consider suicide before he’s actually willing to reveal his secrets. And I think the story really illustrates how as a society we become so conditioned not to own up to who we are and to what we’ve done for fear of being judged. And I could really relate to him because in my marriage I cheated on my wife for three years and for three years I never told her, something I am not particularly proud of.

At the end of the marriage I actually came clean and took responsibility for what I have done. We got divorced and I believe one of the only reasons we’re still very, very close friends today is because I shared my secret and I told the truth.

But in John’s case, he was unwilling to share his secrets. He was too terrified of the consequences of sharing a secret. But the irony is that very often the consequences of keeping our secrets to ourselves are far outweigh the consequences of actually sharing our secrets. In John’s case, the consequences of keeping a secret that was having him want to commit suicide, in my case I could never predicted that a week after I shared with my wife I had been cheating on her for three years, she met the man of her dreams and is still with him today.

I could never predicted that five weeks later, I would end up filling a childhood dream and moving to an island in the Caribbean where I still live today.

My point is, well I reached out to John first and I said to him, “Look, I’m wanting to support you. I’m wanting to give you some coaching for free for as long as it takes, if you’re willing to go to your wife and share with her what you’ve done, because when we share our truth with others, we empower them to find their own peace and I never heard from John again.

The lesson here is that like anything worth having, self-liberation comes at a price. And the price is getting out of your comfort zone. And the thing that’s going to stop you from getting out of your comfort zone and experiencing the freedom and the rapture of being alive Joseph Campbell talks about is telling yourself but I don’t have any secrets I am hiding.

And maybe you don’t, maybe are one of the few people who is totally transparent and transformed and there may be a few in the room but I like you consider this – professor of psychology at University Massachusetts, his name is Robert Feldman, he is an expert in deception. And his research shows that when two people meet each other for the first time, they lie on average three times every 10 minutes.

So if at times we’re lying 18 times an hour, I invite you to consider that perhaps we’re all liars to some degree and we all have secrets. And the best we can do is not to try and stop lying. The best we can do, if we’re all liars, is to tell the truth about where we’ve lied and openly and honestly take responsibility what we’ve done.

So I’d like to tell you the truth. Right now the secret I’m hiding from you is I’m really terrified of giving this talk. I really want you to like me. I want to impress you. I have mentors in this audience who I deeply want to impress. I want to have this talk on TED.com and secretly I’m hoping that the speakers that are following me or quaking in their boots right now thinking how am I ever going to follow Bruce’s talk.

So do I risk – when I am exposing myself, am I risking you thinking I am a fraud perhaps but in being authentically who I am, do I feel more alive? My heart’s beating in a million miles an hour. Can I connect with you in a deeper way? Absolutely. And this is the invitation I want to extend to you that you begin sharing the secrets that you’re hiding from the people you love in your life with them and get in touch with this, Joseph Campbell said that experience rapture of being alive.

I saw this happen in South Africa in 1996 during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was designed to heal our nation of the wounds of apartheid and victims of gross acts of human violence were invited to come up in this kind of road show format, where they took around the country and share what actually happened to them, share the stories and share these beautiful and touching and moving often horrendously violent stories and they were televised.

And then the perpetrators of these crimes were invited to come up – murderers, people who’d beaten people to death were invited to come up and confess and request amnesty and sometimes the murderers would actually meet the parents of their victims. And throughout this process, nation healed and aliveness returned to South Africa as our secrets were exposed, that we never had before, so much so that this is our tourist slogan now: South Africa – Alive with possibility. This is an advertisement for South Africa. This is an advertisement for your life because you too can regain that rapture of being alive. You too can hold your own truth and reconciliation commission in your own life.

And here is where I recommend you begin. I recommend you begin with your big secret first, the one that scares the crap out of you to share, the one that robs you of aliveness the most. Maybe you’re angry with a friend and you haven’t found the courage to tell them it and there’s distance between the two of you as a result. Maybe you’ve lied to somebody close to you and you haven’t found the courage to tell them yet and the love you once had is fading away.

Maybe you’re still in the closet about being homosexual. Maybe you’re hiding an addiction and your secret double life is preventing you from connecting with people in a meaningful way. Maybe you’ve had an abortion and haven’t told the father of the baby. Maybe you’ve cheated on a lover like I did and have known up to you yet an intimacy you once felt in your relationship is gone. Or maybe it’s none of those things, big or small whatever it is for you, to lie and keep secrets is a fundamental part of being human. And lying and keeping secrets does not make you a bad person and sharing your secrets and  cleaning up your life certainly doesn’t make you a good person. It just allows you to be authentically yourself and create a life worth living from being who you are.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that having nothing but the truth about who you are and what you’ve done, how you feel is a radical stand to take.

So a word of warning: this course of action isn’t for the faint of heart. Things may get a lot worse before they get better when you begin sharing the secrets you’ve been hiding from the world. You may be ending up in the receiving end of a lot of pain and a lot of anger when you first share those secrets.

But I want to promise you something. If you open your heart and take responsibility for having kept those secrets over the years and sit with the people who you’ve upset until they are complete, I promise you an aliveness will return to your life. Like you’ve never experienced before. And it won’t be just fleeting temporary fix that most of us who are looking for outside ourselves. It will be a way of being that stays with you.

So if you have no interest in self-liberation, please don’t remember a word I have said. And very please, don’t share your secrets with anybody because once you do, a world without numbness awaits you. A world filled with aliveness.

So the question I want to leave you with is – what’s your secret and how honest and open and willed are you willing to be if sharing it would bring you back to life.

Thank you.

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