Nobody will know except you

It arrives sounding like a technicality, almost like it is being helpful. Nobody will know. You are alone, the timing is right, and nothing about tonight has to be reported to anybody tomorrow. Notice that the offer is not really about the cigarette itself. Secrecy is being handed to you as a discount, as though the cost of this was mostly other people finding out, and that particular charge can be waived just this once.

But hear what the discount admits. You only hide something you have already judged. Nobody offers to keep it quiet when you drink a glass of water or go for a walk around the block. That clause is not protecting you from other people's opinions at all. It is protecting the plan from yours, because some part of you has already reviewed this and reached a verdict, and the secrecy exists to keep that part out of the room. The whisper is a confession.

And the list of witnesses was never as short as it claimed. You are on it, and you cannot be excluded. You are the one who has to be you tomorrow, holding the memory of tonight while telling somebody it is going fine. There is also the One who does not need to be told, who is present in a room with nobody else in it, and who sees this hour for exactly what it is. Nothing here happens unwitnessed.

Turn that all the way around, because it cuts both ways and the good side is much bigger. The no you are about to make is also unwitnessed. Nobody will clap, nobody will hear about it, it will show up nowhere except in who you are in the morning. That is the kind that counts most, precisely because it was not performed for anyone. God sees the private ones. Make this one, go to bed, and let it be the thing nobody knows.