Friendship and secrets The following piece is not something I wrote on my own, it’s taken from a famous Italian novel of the 19th century. One of life’s biggest relief is friendship; and one of friendship’s relief is to have someone to tell our secrets to. Now, friends are not paired by two, as happens with married people. Everyone, in general, has more than one, and this form an endless chain. When, then, a man looks for the relief of telling his secrets to his friend, he generates into his friend the desire to have the same relief reporting the story to someone. Normally he prays the friend not to tell his matters to anyone else, and this request, if literally respected, would immediately stop the long chain of mutual comfort. But general practice limits the secrecy obligation just to a friend that can be considered as much good as the one from whom the secret has come, imposing him the same secrecy condition. So, passing from a trustworthy friend to another, the secret moves along that infinite chain, coming at the end to the ears of the man that was supposed never to be informed about that. Normally, the walk of this secret would be very long if each person would have just two trustworthy friends: one from who the secret comes and another to tell the secret to. But actually exist some lucky men that have hundreds of trustworthy friends, and when the secret reach one of this men, the spreading speed increase faster and faster and it’s no longer possible to follow its track.