There is a website on the internet called Post Secret; the basic idea of it is for people to send in postcards to an address and these postcards are used in a multitude of mediums as a community art project. The site itself describes it as, “…an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard” (Post Secret, 2008). This is a unique and interesting concept which has a lot of depth and scope to it; the fact of whether all of the “secrets” that are posted on the site are in fact secrets or not is kind of arbitrary to the concept of art and expression that the project itself represents. The site responds to the question of, “Are all 180,000 secrets real?” (Post Secret, 2008) by saying, “…think of each postcard as a work of art. And as art, secrets can have different layers of truth. Some can be both true and false, others can become true over time depending on our choices…Sometimes a secret we keep from ourselves only becomes true after we read it on a strangers postcard” (Post Secret, 2008).
The site itself serves an important function; it creates an avenue for individuals to express themselves in ways that in some instances would otherwise be more or less impossible. It seems that this sort of expression has the capacity in some situations to help people in a variety of ways; for instance sometimes people hold something inside that they believe is so dark or wrong, or whatever, that they do not feel as though they can share it with anyone for fear of being rejected or judged for their thoughts or actions. It is in this type of instance that being able to anonymously tell someone, or in this case many people, of that secret may in fact help to heal that person and to possibly help relieve the pressure of holding that secret inside. There is an example of this on the website which is a card sent in by an anonymous student in reference to the feeling of fear after dealing with the Virginia Tech school shootings. It is postcards like this that serve as avenues for people to express their feelings and secrets that would possibly never be shared without such a unique idea as, Post Secret. Personally the author believes that this is a vital and important avenue of expression; after living through the horrors and life-changing experience of walking the streets of Iraq for sixteen months, dealing with the fear, the death, the loss, and the unknown, it is apparent that this site could personally provide a way to express some of the feelings that present themselves after having such an experience. The website Post Secret provides a way for people to express thoughts and feelings that would otherwise be buried within them for perhaps an eternity.
The site itself serves an important function; it creates an avenue for individuals to express themselves in ways that in some instances would otherwise be more or less impossible. It seems that this sort of expression has the capacity in some situations to help people in a variety of ways; for instance sometimes people hold something inside that they believe is so dark or wrong, or whatever, that they do not feel as though they can share it with anyone for fear of being rejected or judged for their thoughts or actions. It is in this type of instance that being able to anonymously tell someone, or in this case many people, of that secret may in fact help to heal that person and to possibly help relieve the pressure of holding that secret inside. There is an example of this on the website which is a card sent in by an anonymous student in reference to the feeling of fear after dealing with the Virginia Tech school shootings. It is postcards like this that serve as avenues for people to express their feelings and secrets that would possibly never be shared without such a unique idea as, Post Secret. Personally the author believes that this is a vital and important avenue of expression; after living through the horrors and life-changing experience of walking the streets of Iraq for sixteen months, dealing with the fear, the death, the loss, and the unknown, it is apparent that this site could personally provide a way to express some of the feelings that present themselves after having such an experience. The website Post Secret provides a way for people to express thoughts and feelings that would otherwise be buried within them for perhaps an eternity.
Post Secret, (2008, March). Retrieved March 2, 2008, from http://postsecret.blogspot.com/
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