What are your secrets?

If you could write one down and send it into oblivion, would you? Here, you can.

This week I want to share one of my favorite contemporary art projects—PostSecret. Initially started in the early 2000s by simply handing out postcards to strangers and asking them to write a secret down, PostSecret has grown into a global art project that runs both online and in exhibitions around the world. Every Sunday, the website updates with new postcards that people have mailed in anonymously for the world to read. I scroll endlessly. Some are funny and relatable. Some are deeply unsettling. Most are heartbreaking. But each one reveals something beautiful about humanity—that we are so much more alike than we know.

That feeling of connection is what permeated the air as I visited the exhibit that’s here in San Diego. I walked through the hallways, reading hundreds of anonymous confessions in a trance. Some of them were so raw that I felt as if they were taken out of my own journal, out of my own heart. I watched someone write down their own secret and drop it in the bin. All they could say was how free they felt. And that broke me.

We live in a world that keeps secrets. It’s an act we grow up perfecting the performance of. When we’re little, we tell everyone everything. We embody truth. We embody ourselves, all the time. We haven’t met the danger that lurks in vulnerability. No one has hurt us yet. We have not yet learned to keep things to ourselves. We show up unafraid, in brilliant hues.

Then, sooner than we wish, we learn shame. We learn embarrassment, pain, and heartbreak. So we begin to keep things inside. We leave things unspoken. And in doing so, we dull how we show up in the world. We round out all of our edges so as to never get caught on anything, not realizing that means never feeling at all. We all become actors, playing parts. And then, one day, someone asks us to tell them a secret and we realize that we have a whole lifetime of stories inside of our bodies that are just screaming to get out. Little things. Big things. Things someone else needs to hear in order to know that they are not alone. Because that’s the danger isn’t it? Not only do we dilute our personas when we keep so much hidden away, but we contribute to the gaping abyss of loneliness that is consuming our world. It’s an illusion. PostSecret is proving that, if only by shouting anonymously into the void.

Click here to read other people’s secrets. Click here and scroll down to write your own.

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