Sunday, April 21, 2013

Post Secret

Image Sourced at Capstone Seminar

This week I went to the Post Secret Event at Hamer Hall.


I love the Post Secret website and I was really looking forward to getting to experience the live version that I have read about at the site.


The evening did not disappoint.




Frank Warren was a warm and earnest host and took the audience on a meandering journey through not only secrets from the site, but also from his own life.


While some of the secrets he shared with us I had seen before there were some that truly floored me.


But the thing that interested me the most was what Warren revealed about himself.


I had no idea that he had come from a troubled childhood, that he had struggled with mental illness and had been raised pentecostal.


But of course once I knew, it all made perfect sense.  As I watched the strange but moving ritual of audience members voicing their secrets to a room of two thousand strangers it did seem like some sort of religious experience.


And it seemed so appropriate that this man has been entrusted to be the keeper of secrets.  He takes his work very seriously and he is so very respectful of the information that is shared with him.


That doesn't mean it was a sombre affair.  There were plenty of laughs too - Warren is humble and self deprecating.  And some of the secrets are just hilarious.


For me the most interesting thing was when he shared his favourite secret which read "There is always hope."  He talked about how lives can always be turned around, how we never know what is around each corner.  And how he had not found purposeful work in his life until his mid forties.


And that gives me hope. 





What's your secret?