I Have Always Been Fascinated By Secrets
But keeping secrets is the last thing most of us need.
As a young person, I was always fascinated by the notion of anonymous correspondence. Blame it on an overactive and introverted imagination, but books like Sophie’s World and Post Secret always made me long for some sort of secret stranger to show up and shake up my own life.
“The philosopher had rescued her. The unknown letter writer had saved her from the triviality of everyday existence.”
- Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World
In Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy, a Norwegian teen finds two anonymous messages in her mailbox which ask "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" Sophie quickly becomes obsessed with philosophical questions which change her entire understanding of her town and own self.
Post Secret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives is different. It’s a real world collection of secrets that were submitted to Frank Warren for a community art project. Frank handed out postcards to strangers and left them in public places--asking folks to write down a secret they never told anyone else and mail it back to him.
