Secrets
A year or two ago, I heard about the website Post Secret (http://postsecret.blogspot.com/) on NPR (because I am always listening to NPR)(and was recently on an NPR show, gratuitous self-promotion avoided unless you’ve already un-anonymized already, in which case, nevermind, but I digress). Post Secret started as a piece of performance art, (a genre I generally don’t get and don’t have much time for, frankly, but I digress), in which Frank Warren asked people to anonymously send in secrets to him. Secrets were to be on postcards only and should be works of art (liberally construed). Since the first posting, Frank has received thousands and thousands of cards, published three books, toured the country with a travelling art show of the secrets, and, according to many, saved lives.
I’ve been fascinated by this website. Each week, Frank posts a few new secrets (on Sunday mornings). It’s one of the first things I do on Sunday. I read the secrets–sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are heartbreaking, sometimes infuriating. I sent out a link to the website to a few of my nearest and dearest, but found that most of them weren’t captivated by it.
Obviously, many people are, otherwise this Post Secret thing wouldn’t be the phenomenom it is, but I wondered why it didn’t capture other people the way it did me. I don’t have an answer to that, but it’s made me think.
I’ve realized over the last year or so of looking at the website that I have never been tempted to send in my own card. In fact, I’ve wanted to do one, but I’ve found that I don’t seem to have secrets. This seems odd to me, since I tend to be pretty reserved out in the world, even though I do a lot of work that is very public. But I have pretty much told someone in the world all there is to know–which is not to say I’ve told everyone all there is to know. It is to say that I don’t have any deep burning secret that I haven’t been able to tell someone.
This has been somewhat of a startling realization for me. Something Frank Warren says is “There are two kinds of secrets: the ones we keep from others and the ones we keep from ourselves.” That kind of worries me. It nags at the same worry that I think most people have that we might be one of those Annoying People and not know it. What don’t I tell myself? But over the last 15 or so years, I’ve really worked hard to be upfront with what I am thinking and feeling and doing. No secrets, so far as I know.
Anyway, in one of my classes last year, I asked my students to look at the website. The next class meeting someone asked if we could do the same thing and put the secrets up on the wall of the room. We did it. I was astounded at the disclosures. You never know if the secrets are true or not, but I was amazed at how sincerely troubled many of my students were. I never expected the confessions of drug addiction, self-mutilation, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being “found out” about one thing or another.
It made me feel very sad, that so many of my students were in the midst of such enormous pain. Perhaps that’s the job of college students; certainly my early college years were a mass of confusion and trying to figure out how to be a grown up. Certainly there were times in my life where I felt I had no one I could really tell the truth to about what my inner life was like. I thought I was the only one who felt that way. Eventually, I discovered a few people who became true friends and who have been with me for years now, but before them, I think I felt pretty at sea.
I think what I find so compelling about Post Secret is the complexity of people’s lives. We all do our daily rituals of getting up, going about our day and it often looks pretty mundane. For me, Post Secret shows me that ordinary people are not ordinary. It reminds me to look closer.
On the Post Secret website, Frank suggests that people who like the site link to it, so that’s what gave rise to this post. Given my somewhat overwhelming experience of receiving the secrets of my students, I am amazed at how much Frank has to hold within him, now that he knows the secrets of so many.
