ted演讲稿

　　I was one of the only kids in college who had a reason to go to the P.O.bo_ at the end of the day, and that was mainly because my mother has neverbelieved in email, in Facebook, in te_ting or cell phones in general. And sowhile other kids were BBM-ing their parents, I was literally waiting by themailbo_ to get a letter from home to see how the weekend had gone, which was alittle frustrating when Grandma was in the hospital, but I was just looking forsome sort of scribble, some unkempt cursive from my mother.

　　And so when I moved to New York City after college and got completelysucker-punched in the face by depression, I did the only thing I could think ofat the time. I wrote those same kinds of letters that my mother had written mefor strangers, and tucked them all throughout the city, dozens and dozens ofthem. I left them everywhere, in cafes and in libraries, at the U.N.,everywhere. I blogged about those letters and the days when they were necessary,and I posed a kind of crazy promise to the Internet: that if you asked me for ahand-written letter, I would write you one, no questions asked. Overnight, myinbo_ morphed into this harbor of heartbreak -- a single mother in Sacramento, agirl being bullied in rural Kansas, all asking me, a 22-year-old girl who barelyeven knew her own coffee order, to write them a love letter and give them areason to wait by the mailbo_.

　　Well, today I fuel a global organization that is fueled by those trips tothe mailbo_, fueled by the ways in which we can harness social media like neverbefore to write and mail strangers letters when they need them most, but most ofall, fueled by crates of mail like this one, my trusty mail crate, filled withthe scriptings of ordinary people, strangers writing letters to other strangersnot because they're ever going to meet and laugh over a cup of coffee, butbecause they have found one another by way of letter-writing.

　　But, you know, the thing that always gets me about these letters is thatmost of them have been written by people that have never known themselves lovedon a piece of paper. They could not tell you about the ink of their own loveletters. They're the ones from my generation, the ones of us that have grown upinto a world where everything is paperless, and where some of our bestconversations have happened upon a screen. We have learned to diary our painonto Facebook, and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less.

　　But what if it's not about efficiency this time? I was on the subwayyesterday with this mail crate, which is a conversation starter, let me tellyou. If you ever need one, just carry one of these. (Laughter) And a man juststared at me, and he was like, "Well, why don't you use the Internet?" And Ithought, "Well, sir, I am not a strategist, nor am I specialist. I am merely astoryteller." And so I could tell you about a woman whose husband has just comehome from Afghanistan, and she is having a hard time unearthing this thingcalled conversation, and so she tucks love letters throughout the house as a wayto say, "Come back to me. Find me when you can." Or a girl who decides that sheis going to leave love letters around her campus in Dubuque, Iowa, only to findher efforts ripple-effected the ne_t day when she walks out onto the quad andfinds love letters hanging from the trees, tucked in the bushes and the benches.Or the man who decides that he is going to take his life, uses Facebook as a wayto say goodbye to friends and family. Well, tonight he sleeps safely with astack of letters just like this one tucked beneath his pillow, scripted bystrangers who were there for him when.

　　These are the kinds of stories that convinced me that letter-writing willnever again need to flip back her hair and talk about efficiency, because she isan art form now, all the parts of her, the signing, the scripting, the mailing,the doodles in the margins. The mere fact that somebody would even just sitdown, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through,with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up andthe iPhone is pinging and we've got si_ conversations rolling in at once, thatis an art form that does not fall down to the Goliath of "get faster," no matterhow many social networks we might join. We still clutch close these letters toour chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, when we turn pages intopalettes to say the things that we have needed to say, the words that we haveneeded to write, to sisters and brothers and even to strangers, for far toolong. Thank you.