PS, I Love You
The event at Bovard was packed and people were turned away at the door! The event was very simple but so moving. Having known a lot about the site for a long time, Frank Warren (the creator of the project) didn't really say anything new, but did offer his thoughts on our need to fundamentally connect to, and form communities with, each other (also mentioned in conjunction with the issue of suicide prevention). The thing that he wanted the audience to take away was that each of us, if we are honest with ourselves, probably has a secret that somebody else would find heartbreaking; there are certainly stories that I could tell that I know would affect others. Frank's message was to remember that we each share this quality as humans and this should inform the way that we interact with each other. I have many larger thoughts on the issue as Alejandra can attest to, but there's a very good reason why I put this book down on the counselor profile as my favorite and one of the few books that has fundamentally changed the way in which I view the world.
One of the things that I think that I will remember for some time is the experience of being in a room as large as Bovard and, for a moment, knowing that I was experiencing something with a community of other people whom I would normally never interact with. As with all of the other PostSecret talks, people in the audience had the chance to get up and confess their secrets to the audience. I'm not easily fazed, but the thing that made me hold my breath was when students got up to talk to strangers about the things that they were dealing with. Sure, some of the items were somewhat trivial (but still valid), some were burdensome, and some were happy. On any given day, I'd react to these things as I normally do when I check out the website on Sundays (it's always the first thing that I do when I wake up) but this time, things were different. The secrets that were being spoken in front of me were those of my kids, of our kids. Of course, not in the biological sense, but these were the students that we collectively had admitted and many of them were broken in some way. These students were dealing with things that I had no idea about and would never learn through my brief interaction with them on a college application but there they were struggling to stay afloat and survive. These students were reaching out to their peers and although we don't do student affairs/services, I couldn't help but think that these people had passed under our gaze on their journeys to USC. I couldn't see all of the speakers from my seat, but like what happens when I look at the images of the website on my computer screen, I felt this deep part of me stir in sympathy for those in pain whom I do not even know. These strangers are calling out to me with their twisted siren song and I react before my brain can even process what I've just seen. Many of the things that students were dealing with had nothing to do with academic issues but I kept wishing that they had told me these stories as applicants. While there weren't a plethora of happy anecdotes, there were some and these are the ones that always make you smile. On the website, I remember a secret saying that a person wished that she looked forward to dying with lines on her face from laughing too much and that she was still a teen.
I find this whole idea fascinating as each card has a story behind it and you get to get a glimpse of that behind the everyday mask that people wear. You don't know who has which secrets but it makes you think that people must have some and that they just might tell you if you take the time to listen.
Part of the presentation also showed the PostSecret movie, which debuted a while back, but is something that kills me every time. I'm biased as I always associate the song with Six Feet Under and it just makes me feel something that I can't sum up. The emotions are somewhere between sadness, longing, sympathy, joy, confusion, and hope. I've never consciously been in the situation of the speaker in the song, but I can easily see myself there and identify with what that might feel like. While I don't want to give away too much about the movie, there's one secret that I saw when the short first came out and that hit me again tonight: "I wish I had been a better sister than you were a brother. Yours was not the only life that you took. I miss you. I hate you. I love you. I am sorry." There are no words, really, to adequately describe how this manages to affect me every time that I see it. On the other end, there's also one that says "When we decided to keep you, your life wasn't the only one saved."
I talk about this project all of the time in my Meet USC presentations as an example of an Arts & Humanities event but also with the hope that I can contribute to this project in some small way. Perhaps by getting some high school student (or a parent) to take a look at the site, he or she will find a release from the current state of stress.
You can click here
for the PostSecret movie and find the blog here
.
Also of note: To Write Love on Her Arms
and We Feel Fine
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