Voices
I began collecting and sharing
secrets in 2004. I printed 3,000
self-addressed postcards with simple instructions about sharing an
artful secret. I passed them out to
strangers on the streets of Washington, D.C., not knowing what to
expect. But soon secrets began to
find their way to my mailbox.
The idea began to spread virally and I began receiving shocking, silly and soulful secrets from
around the world. Today, I have
received over a half-million secrets and they continue to come.
One in my TEDTalk was a surprise
marriage proposal. I ended my
talk with a poignant secret that
was a final song from a grandmother to her granddaughter.
Secrets can be transformative:
Sharing a secret with another person, or just with ourselves, can
change who we are.
Two questions I often hear are:
Do you think these anonymous
secrets are true? And what happens if you get a secret about a
serious crime?
I think of each postcard as a work
of art, and as self-revelatory 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.
FRANK
WARREN
Sometimes a secret we keep
from ourselves only becomes true
after we read it on a stranger’s
postcard. Early in the project I
received this email:
“Dear Frank, Do you know
that I left my boyfriend of a year
and a half because of the postcard that read, ‘His temper is so
scary, I’ve lost all my opinions.’
It hadn’t even occurred to me
what was happening, and it took
a total stranger writing it down
to make me realize what the hell
was going on in my life.”
I get very few secrets about
crimes, but I have been contacted
by the FBI about one particular
postcard mailed to me. That story
ended positively, but I need to
keep the details secret.
Secrets are the currency
TED and The Huffington Post are
excited to bring you TEDWeekends,
a curated weekend program that
introduces a powerful “idea worth
spreading” every Friday, anchored in
an exceptional TEDTalk. This week’s
TEDTalk is accompanied by an original
blog post from the featured speaker,
along with new op-eds, thoughts
and responses from the HuffPost
community. Watch the talk above, read
the blog post and tell us your thoughts
below. Become part of the conversation!
HUFFINGTON
04.28.13