Privacy protects experiences from premature interpretation.

An experience needs time before anyone decides what it means, including you. Share it early and it arrives back interpreted, framed by other people’s reactions, and that framing sticks before you have formed your own. A grief, a decision, a new love, an ending, all of these are vulnerable to being defined by whoever comments first. Privacy buys the interval where the meaning is still open.

When something significant happens, wait before broadcasting it. Give yourself a stretch of time where the only interpretation available is yours. Then decide who gets to weigh in.