“Remember the times you could have pressed quit—but hit continue.”

We were an audience in awe.

Some years ago at the Calgary Folk Festival, my sister and I stumbled upon a small audience gathered at a stage to hear a spoken word group.

T.O.F.U. Shane Koyczan was one of the performers, and as he began to speak the audience stopped rummaging in their bags for snacks and rearranging their portable seats and looking through their programs and gazed up, rapt, ears and eyes open.

You know those moments in life when you feel silently bonded to a group of strangers through an indescribable experience? Where you look to the guy in dreads and bracelets on your right and to the elderly grandmother with a stroller on your left and you all smile at one other, knowingly? Shane gave us moments like that.

I believe, whenever and wherever he performs, he still does.

We all have bad days—here, he instructs us what to do. Watch and listen, and then do it again.

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Editor: Emily Bartran

Photo: YouTube Still