Shane Koycazan gives a TED audience a live performance with background story to his internet sensation poem “To This Day”
America is largely, despite our many claims to the opposite, a society of conformity. Difference terrifies us. This is no more evident than in school, where the slightest of imperfections, irregularities, or variance in appearance or attitude is met with a contemptuous always evolving lists of abject epithets meant only to separate difference from the flock and shore up convention. With bullying being such a growing concern in the media, one would imagine that we’ve put to rest the old saying about sticks and stones, but some how, to this day, we seem to forget what power our words have to hurt. As is usually the case, the opposite is also true, our words also have an amazing power to heal, to communicate beauty, to express our awe of the of the world.