PostSecrets was initiated by Frank Warren, and has since become an international project, with books published and seminars given in different locations. The following is my personal response to this project:
John Keats wrote in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty." When I first read it I didn't really understand what it meant. Beauty, I though, was something skin deep, how can it be linked to something as profound as truth? In fact, it seemed that beauty was often the concealer of truth. But while browsing the Post Secrets website one day, the line came back to me, and somehow it was those simple post cards that illuminated meaning in this line of poetry for me.
Did I say simple? Well, yes on the surface they are simple messages, of secrets told for the first time, and yet this is always an aura of something amazingly profound about these messages. Some are filled with hope: "Today I stopped being a rape victim and became a rape survivor"; some are spiteful: "My ex-husband is marrying the woman he had an affair with & left me for. He doesn't know she has cheated on him. I love karma."; some are confronting "I sometimes, completely innocently, imagine beating the hell out of my co-workers."; and some are innocent, some are strange, some are funny, some are beyond words. But somehow there is a inherent beauty to the fact that all these thoughts and feelings can be put all the same place and read one after the other. In a way, this collection of post cards summarised human nature better than any history book, or portrait, or scientific research could ever show. It's a display of the mundane aspects of life, but at the same time, it makes you realise what's special about our lives, almost subconsciously.
Similarly there's something profoundly beautiful about their anonymity. Somehow shame and distrust are wiped out. Even the most terrible secrets seem to come from someone that is empowered by confidence. In this way, these post cards stop becoming one person's secret and become everyone's secret. I can't say how often I have read a Post Secret and thought: my gosh, I can relate to that. While on the other hand, it could be a secret that is foreign to you that elicits the urge to find the sender and give them a big hug. Somehow everyone is reduced to our basic humanity that it doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like.
So perhaps there is a beauty that is more than skin deep. It's not the beauty you see with your eyes, but one you feel when connecting with the truth. "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty."
But of course, not everyone connects with Post Secrets in the same way. A friend of mine, seems to think it is a bunch of pathetic attention seeking people. (Yes, I know! I was crushed.) But who knows, you might like it. If you're interested, check out their website: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ - new secrets are uploaded every Sunday.