Huffington Magazine Issue 46 | Page 33

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