Okay I don’t know if any of you have heard of a book called Post Secret but this guy named Frank Warren put word out somehow to people from any and everywhere to send anonymous secrets to an address. Literally send a postcard with a secret – preferably one line and it’s incredible the sorts of things that people write. OH MY GOD!!!! Some funny, some heart breaking. I’ve had it for a bit and been reading bits of it. Then it sort of got lost on my bookshelf until recently and I broke it out again. Thought I’d mention just a couple that made me laugh or made me intensely sad.
“The love of my life is ugly”
“I don’t know what to say to God anymore.”
“I feel guilty about sometimes wishing that I didn’t have children. I don’t dare say it out loud for fear I might trigger something bad happening to them.”
“I stole your duck and took him to San Francisco.”
“The night he died he tried to call me . . . when I saw it was him, I didn’t answer.”
See what I mean, y’all? That shit is deep and sometimes deeply funny. There is also a blog you can go to to read new ones.
It’s gotten me thinking about how many people carry something they think is so dark or terrible that, indeed may be heavy but not unlike someone or, in fact, everyone else’s secrets. But we carry these things around, making us emotionally, mentally, and sometimes physically sick. All the negative energy and self-flaggelation. Eek! Come on, people, let’s let it go. So many wonderful things to hold on to instead. And I absolutely do not believe in guilt. My good friends know this. And not because I’m a cold remorseless serial killer . . . no, no I’m not a cold remorseless serial killer. 😉 I think guilt is a cruel method of control imposed on people by others. I have no patience with someone who tries to make me feel guilty. If someone cares about me, they wouldn’t want me to feel that bad about something just because they want something from me. And as far as self-imposed guilt about a given event or situation, this is the way I look at it. If you can fix it, fix it. If you can’t fix it, forget about it, it’s done. If you can fix it but chose not to, forget about it anyway because you’ve made the decision not to fix it. I’ve watched more people waste their own possibilities because of guilt and I just won’t do it. It doesn’t exist in my world and it shouldn’t exist for anyone.
Wow, that wasn’t were I intended to go with this. But there you are. Down with guilt!!!! Up with Post Secret. Woohoo
Thom Allison 
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