Frank Warren probably knows your secret.
Chances are you’ve either mailed it to him on a postcard
or someone else has. But don’t worry, your secrets are safe
with Warren, even if they are published in a best-selling
hardback.
“Every hour of every day I’m reminded of the
secrets,” Warren said. “When I go into Starbucks, I am
reminded of a postcard I received that said, “˜I give decaf to
customers who are rude to me.'”
Students can learn more of these secrets when Warren, founder of
the PostSecret project, visits UCLA today in Ackerman Union Grand
Ballroom at noon to speak and sign copies of his books. An exhibit
of original PostSecret postcards will also be on display in the
Ackerman second-floor lounge starting at 11 a.m.
Julia Liu, a member of the speaker staff of the Campus Events
Commission and a second-year microbiology, immunology and molecular
genetics student, explained that they chose to have Warren speak at
UCLA because of his project’s appeal.
“PostSecret appeals to everyone,” Liu said.
“Some people view it as therapeutic, and others view it as
entertainment.”
Warren’s PostSecret project is a community art project in
which people send him anonymous homemade postcards, each inscribed
with a secret the person has never shared.
“I started the project because of a humiliating childhood
experience from the fourth grade,” Warren said. “I
never told anyone about it. Finally, I told my wife and my daughter
my secret and wrote it on a postcard and mailed it to
myself.”
This method of coping with a troubling secret was therapeutic
for Warren, and he has since encouraged others to unleash the
secrets they keep inside.
Warren now receives around 1,000 postcards every week, and he
reads every one of them. He publishes a select number of postcards
on his popular Web site, postsecret.com, every Sunday, and has
compiled other postcards into three books.
The most recent book, “The Secret Lives of Men and
Women,” exposes secrets that men and women keep from each
other. One postcard reads, “I’ve been with my wife for
20 years and she doesn’t know who I am.” Another points
to an ultrasound picture and reads, “It’s not his
baby.”
But Warren finds reading the secrets neither depressing nor
invasive.
“I feel privileged that strangers let me peek in, that
they trust me,” he said. “They make me feel like
I’m invisible, like I’m in the room watching the scene
they describe.”
Warren said that even though he wants to reach out to the
writers, he focuses on the process the author of each postcard
endures by recognizing and releasing their secret.
“I learned that sometimes when we think we are keeping a
secret from others, we are keeping a secret from ourselves,”
he said.
Even though Warren cannot directly reach out to each anonymous
postcard writer, his PostSecret project has raised over $75,000 for
the Kristin Brooks Hope Center, which runs a free suicide hotline.
This is Warren’s way of getting help for those who write to
him with their dark secrets.
He also sees his Web site and books as a community where people
can read the secrets and respond to them, possibly seeing their own
secret on someone else’s postcard.
“When people look through the book or the Web site, they
might come initially for voyeuristic reasons, but you cannot look
at the secrets for too long before you see the secrets you
keep,” Warren said.
After reading so many of these secrets, Warren has gained a
deeper sense of compassion for the average stranger.
“If I see someone sitting by themselves in the movie
theater, I feel connected to them,” he said. “I can
imagine what their rich interior life must be like, and their
stories. I feel more empathy for them, … knowing that everyone
has a secret that, if you knew it, would break your heart. (If) we
remembered that, it would make us more compassionate.”
But secrets aren’t always so serious to Warren, even when
he’s talking to the press.
“Do you want to know a secret?” he said. “I
told you that I was finding a spot with better reception (at the
beginning of this interview). I was just putting on a clean
T-shirt.”