Not Quite My Favourite Post Secret of the Week

Unfortunately there wasn't anything I connected with on a particularly personal level this week on Post Secret so instead I got thinking about how odd it would've been if the person who sent in the secret I wrote about last week was one of the people who viewed the blog. I would love to know if I interpreted it in the right way and if not, what they thought of what I said.

But anyway, here's a couple of funny pictures...

I wish I could say I made these but I didn't. They're from the internet. There are a lot of them out there, Post Secrets that have been messed with (or improved) and these are two of my favourites. They show one of my most feverish beliefs, that everything should be mocked. No matter how much you may care about or enjoy something, never forget the funny side of it because that's when you disappear into arrogance and pretentiousness. Also, I do still think about how awesome Arrested Development was.

So yeah, short blog today. Blame the people who sent in less interesting secrets (unless you're one of those people, in which case I apologise profusely). The next one I put up will be my last before a few lovely weeks away in France with my friends, so it will be a Top 5 Holidays.

My Favourite Post Secret of the Week

Most of the people reading this blog already know what Post Secret is but, just in case you don't, it is a website that shows postcards people have sent in with their secrets on. At worst it can be pretentious, self-involved and passive aggressive (kind of like blogging) but it can occasionally be thought provoking and inspiring.

This is my favourite Post Secret from this week's selection because it is something I expect to feel in fifteen to twenty years time.  

Stephen King wrote a great piece on all the dreams and ambitions you can have when you're young in the introduction to The Gunslinger. When considering how unrealistic these things are, he asked: "If you don't start out too big for your britches, how are you gonna fill 'em when you grow up?"


When you're young you set yourself goals and you give yourself ideals but as you get older the goals start to seem more unattainable and the ideals are lost to the struggles of the real world. It is my understanding that few lives go according to their original plans. More commonly people wake up one morning in their late thirties and realise "Wow, this is my life." When you do wake up that morning with the memories of the dreams you once had and the ideals that were bargained away, it is the person you wake up to and all the other people in your life who make the sacrifices worthwhile.

When you accept the fact you will never play for a professional sports team, never star in the film which defines your generation and occasionally vote for a political party who sit so far away from the left that the eighteen year old version of you would cry, it is the relationships you have with people that will get you through. Your friends, your partner, your children and your siblings will be the people to let you know, while you never set the world alight, you honestly improved their lives.

While part of me will always hang onto the dream of owning the last successful independent record store in London, I know it will probably never happen. What makes that knowledge bearable is an image I have. An image of sitting at a dinner table on a Saturday night after a stressful week with a drink in hand. I'll look around the table and see the wife I love, the friends I have had for decades and the children I am proud of. On that night I will think to myself "Fuck (because my vocabulary won't have improved). I made it, my life is awesome."

Stephen King is right, aim high when you're young, aim for the impossible. If you're mighty enough you might even make it happen but if not, the place you find yourself when you're lost will still be pretty incredible and the people who are there with you will be the people you love (as long as you're not a douche pirate).



My next blog will be called In Defence of the Genre: Top 5 Romantic Comedy Films to celebrate the release of Friends with Benefits, which looks pretty funny and just all round pretty.