the world is my SECRET-KEEPER
Okay. This post is long, long, long overdue. So when I started writing this post I promised myself I wouldn't redo it anymore, and that I'd stick with it, and write it out. So that's what I'm doing. (We will ignore the fact that I already erased and rewrote it twice).
PostSecret is (by now) a well-known blog on which 'Frank' posts up secrets that people mail to him on postcards. Crudely decorated or intricately designed; with messages scrawled on in natural handwriting or sneakily typed up and pasted, the secrets and confessions flip over to show a different side to the people we know. The postcards up there could have come from someone two houses away and we wouldn't know it.
What I find incredible about PostSecrets is the honesty with which these people speak. There are, of course, the heated postcards that have devil-horns drawn on the heads of anonymous people who 'broke my heart' and 'never came back'. And then there are secrets you'd really rather never know about. But the most powerful messages are the ones on which people have penned in their feelings; slowly forming the 'l's and dotting the 'i's on their heartfelt confessions and bolt-locked secrets that the world will understand but never know.
Why though?
Even as I write this I am contemplating the possibility of any one of my friends sending a secret to Frank, it amuses/surprises/interests/confuses/..... me to think any of them would. It gives me the same mixed emotions to think one of these secrets could reflect their feelings. In addition to that--it makes me want to laugh or shut up completely when I think about how some of them (secretly) are confessions I would make. And I wonder to myself how many of these secrets you could claim for yourselves.
I wonder what you would think; what you would say to yourselves at the sight of your own secret and confession available for the world to see, and I wonder if it would make you feel better to know someone else could think and feel the same way. I wonder if it really does make you feel relieved to shout out your secret for the entire world to see and realize that no one will ever really know.
One of the cards I once saw (which I tried but couldn't find anywhere on the net anymore) said that "I don't trust my friends. The world is my secret-keeper," and for me it summed up everything there was about PostSecret--it explained why people became dependent on it; continued to send secrets to it and confided in the thousands of nicknames and identities that they will never connect to individual faces. It explained why it was so much easier to confide in the world than in your friends.
Because the world will judge but it cannot see; it will condemn but it cannot sentence; it will tell but it cannot betray; it will understand but it can never, never know.
"There are two kinds of secrets: those we keep from others, and the ones we hide from ourselves." --Frank
PostSecret is (by now) a well-known blog on which 'Frank' posts up secrets that people mail to him on postcards. Crudely decorated or intricately designed; with messages scrawled on in natural handwriting or sneakily typed up and pasted, the secrets and confessions flip over to show a different side to the people we know. The postcards up there could have come from someone two houses away and we wouldn't know it.
What I find incredible about PostSecrets is the honesty with which these people speak. There are, of course, the heated postcards that have devil-horns drawn on the heads of anonymous people who 'broke my heart' and 'never came back'. And then there are secrets you'd really rather never know about. But the most powerful messages are the ones on which people have penned in their feelings; slowly forming the 'l's and dotting the 'i's on their heartfelt confessions and bolt-locked secrets that the world will understand but never know.
Why though?
Even as I write this I am contemplating the possibility of any one of my friends sending a secret to Frank, it amuses/surprises/interests/confuses/..... me to think any of them would. It gives me the same mixed emotions to think one of these secrets could reflect their feelings. In addition to that--it makes me want to laugh or shut up completely when I think about how some of them (secretly) are confessions I would make. And I wonder to myself how many of these secrets you could claim for yourselves.
I wonder what you would think; what you would say to yourselves at the sight of your own secret and confession available for the world to see, and I wonder if it would make you feel better to know someone else could think and feel the same way. I wonder if it really does make you feel relieved to shout out your secret for the entire world to see and realize that no one will ever really know.
One of the cards I once saw (which I tried but couldn't find anywhere on the net anymore) said that "I don't trust my friends. The world is my secret-keeper," and for me it summed up everything there was about PostSecret--it explained why people became dependent on it; continued to send secrets to it and confided in the thousands of nicknames and identities that they will never connect to individual faces. It explained why it was so much easier to confide in the world than in your friends.
Because the world will judge but it cannot see; it will condemn but it cannot sentence; it will tell but it cannot betray; it will understand but it can never, never know.
posted by rachi @ Monday, November 19, 2007
2 Comments:
At November 29, 2007 at 7:45 PM,
Naphthalene said…
I love this blog entry! Goes to show much we really dont know about each other, and how we apparently would rather confide in stangers...
Wut a strange world (0.o)
At December 10, 2007 at 12:28 PM,
Pb, lead said…
Yes! I posted that link in my early blogs, and it's so intruiging. Not at all strange though, when you think about it, why these people feel they need to get these secrets out to strangers.
Post a Comment
<< Home