This is a postcard from PostSecret, a site that encourages people to mail their secrets to be posted on the site. They range from funny to stunning, such as the one above.

Assuming this card is true, imagine the consequences: someone left everyone (s)he knew behind. How selfish. How liberating. How daring. I couldn’t do it, but then I certainly wouldn’t want to. I love my family and friends very much, and I know they love me. I’d never want to abandon them. I’d lose far more than I gained.

Yet in a tiny way, I can see how the idea of being able to completely re-invent yourself is an attractive one. Even on this site, when I sometimes think about my “editorial mission”, though I’d never call it that. Back in ’02, when I started the site’s current incarnation (those who remember the Summer (School) Stories know I actually began “blogging” circa ’99) I thought I might do some personal, “thinking out loud” sort of stuff, with the goal of being truly open, consequences be damned.

That never really got off the ground, in part because my thinking out loud turned out to annoy me, as it seemed weak and indecisive. (And, worse, poorly written!) The controversial stuff was also tempered by my awareness that my relatives were checking in frequently. So I began to fall back into my more “family-friendly” persona: a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” on the stuff that made people uncomfortable (such as being queer, atheist, etc.) It’s just so much simpler to rail against misguided intellectual property policy than to say I wish I had a boyfriend.

After all, you can only tell certain people, certain things. Except, writing that, I don’t know if I believe it. Privacy is important, but shouldn’t we tell each other more, not less? Shouldn’t we allow people the opportunity to try out new versions of themselves? Easier said than done, of course, as people will automatically try to reconcile every action with the likeness of you that lives in their minds.

I don’t know. I don’t have a snappy ending here. Since this is one of my more incoherent posts, maybe that’s appropriate…

This entry was posted on Monday, May 2nd, 2005 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.