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Have you ever felt lonely?
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The urge of wanting
to connect with people,
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but you seem to have no one
you really would want to contact?
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Or, it's a Friday night
and you want to be with others,
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but you have no energy to go out,
so instead you sit at home all evening,
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watch Netflix
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and feel more alone than ever?
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You feel like a monster
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between humans that know how to function.
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This is what loneliness felt like to me.
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So I'm an artist,
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and I process my emotional world
by sharing my feelings through my art.
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If you share your feelings with someone,
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and they understand
and share those feelings too,
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you create an emotional
and deep connection.
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This is why you can be surrounded
by hundreds of people,
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jump from one candidate to the next,
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but still feel lonely.
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It's because these deeper connections
haven't been made.
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I was an always-happy child.
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I think we nearly have
no single photo of me
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where I don't smile broadly
or laugh or joke around.
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And this went on until ...
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well, it's still the case.
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But I had many friend groups
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up until, as a young adult,
I moved to another city
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for my first job as a comic artist.
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And like so many young,
thriving people all over the planet,
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I concentrated all my energy
into my work life.
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But, if you spend, like, 90 percent
of your daily capacity
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trying to succeed at work,
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of course there is nothing left
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to take care of all the other
important aspects in your life,
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like your human relationships.
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Nourishing friendships
as an adult is work.
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You need to be consistent with connecting.
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You need to be open,
you need to be honest.
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And this is all I struggled with,
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because I tend to camouflage
my real feelings
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by trying to appear always happy
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and trying to make
everyone else happy, too,
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by trying to fix their problems.
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And I know a lot of us are guilty of this,
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because it's an easy way to not
think about your own issues.
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Isn't it?
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Hmm? Hmm? Hmm?
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(Laughter)
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OK.
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The turning point came
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when I fell into an emotionally
abusive relationship
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just a few years ago.
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He isolated me
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and left me feeling more alone than ever.
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It was the lowest point in my life,
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but it was also my wake-up call,
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because it was the first time
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that I really felt loneliness.
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Many others put
their feelings into their art.
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There are endless books,
movies, paintings, music,
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all filled with the real
emotion of an artist.
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So, as an artist myself, I did the same.
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I shared my feelings.
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I wanted to help people
cope with loneliness.
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I wanted, yeah, to make them
understand it,
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to really experience it through my art
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in the form of an interactive story,
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a video game.
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So, in our game --
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we called it "Sea of Solitude" --
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you are a person named Kay,
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who is suffering from
such strong loneliness
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that her inner feelings --
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the anger,
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the feeling of hopelessness,
worthlessness --
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turn to the outside,
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and she becomes a monster.
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The game -- well, Kay --
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is actually a representation of me
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and the path I went through
to overcome my struggles.
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The game plays, actually, in Kay's mind,
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so you walk through a world
that is flooded by her tears,
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and the weather is changing by her mood,
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how her mood is changing.
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And, well, the only thing Kay wears,
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the only thing,
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is her backpack.
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It's the baggage we all carry
throughout our life.
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And Kay doesn't know how to cope
with her emotions in the right way,
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so her backpack becomes bigger and bigger
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until it bursts,
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and she finally is forced
to overcome her own struggles.
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In our story, we present many different
manifestations of loneliness.
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Loneliness through
social exclusion is very common.
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In our game, the brother of Kay
got bullied in his school,
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and he just wants to hide and fly away.
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And we portray him as a huge bird monster
surrounded by thick fog.
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The player has to actually
walk through his school
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and experience, really feel the harm,
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that the brother had been through,
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because for a long time,
nobody really listens to him.
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But the very moment
friends and family start to listen,
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the first step towards overcoming
this form of loneliness had been made.
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We also show loneliness in relationships,
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like when parents just stay together
for the sake of their kids
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but end up hurting the entire family.
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We put the player literally in between
the two parents while they are fighting,
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and you get hurt in the middle.
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They don't even see that their daughter,
Kay, is right there
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until she breaks down.
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We also show loneliness
through mental health issues,
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with the boyfriend of Kay,
who suffers from depression
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and shows that sometimes
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it is most important to focus
on your own well-being first.
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The boyfriend also tends
to camouflage his feelings,
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so he appears like a lone,
shiny white wolf.
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But the moment he starts
to interact with his girlfriend, Kay,
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the mask falls off,
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and we see the black dog beneath it:
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depression.
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Sometimes we put on a smile
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instead of dealing
with the issues at hand,
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and that can ultimately make it worse,
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affect the people around us
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and damage our relationships.
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So Kay herself
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we portray as ripped apart
into her basic emotions.
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Some help you,
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some are trying to stop you.
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Self-Doubt is a huge creature,
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always telling Kay how worthless she is
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and that she should just give up.
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Like in real life,
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Self-Doubt is blocking the path,
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and it seems impossible to overcome it.
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Destroying the omnipresence
of Self-Doubt is a slow process.
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But in the game,
you can slowly, like, shrink her,
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so she turns from self-doubt
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to actually healthy doubt,
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and you can finally trust her advice.
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We also show Self-Destruction.
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It's a huge monster
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always lurking nearby
under the water's surface.
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Self-Destruction is actually
the main antagonist of the game,
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and she is always trying to drown you
in the ocean of tears.
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But, when she actually drowns you,
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you wake up just a few moments [before],
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and you have a chance to progress again.
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We wanted to show
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that we all go through hardships
in our life, we all do.
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But if you at least, like, stand up
and try to move forward,
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you are very likely to make it
through your struggle,
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step by step.
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Joy is something that Kay
cannot really embrace or touch.
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It's always something in the distance.
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We portrayed Joy
as a child version of Kay,
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with a yellow raincoat,
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so she is invulnerable
to the ocean of tears.
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But Joy can also turn into obsession
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and start to be actually harmful for Kay,
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like when she starts obsessing
over her boyfriend.
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Joy will not turn back to normal
until Kay realizes
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that her happiness
should not depend on anybody else
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but herself.
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So our monsters appear huge and scary,
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but if you overcome your reluctance
and approach them,
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you soon see that they
are no monsters at all,
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but just fragile beings that are simply
overwhelmed by what life throws at them.
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All of those emotions,
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be it self-doubt or even self-destruction,
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don't completely vanish in our game.
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The key message is to not only
chase for joy or happiness
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but to embrace all your emotions
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and bring them into balance,
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being OK with sometimes not being OK.
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Everyone has their own
loneliness story to tell.
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This realization changed
everything for me.
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Being much more open with my emotions
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and concentrating much more
on my private life,
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my friends, my family.
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When we released the game,
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literally thousands of fans wrote us,
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all sharing their stories with us
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and telling us they felt
not so alone anymore
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just because they played our game.
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Many people wrote us that they felt hope
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for a better future for themselves
for the first time in decades.
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Many wrote us that they seek therapy now,
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just because they played our game
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and felt hopeful to overcome
their own struggles.
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Our game is not a therapy.
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It's not meant to be a therapy.
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It's just my friends and me
sharing our stories
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through our art, video games.
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But we are so deeply thankful
for every single message
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that people feel better,
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just because we shared
our story with them.
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So ...
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I didn't completely overcome
my urge to help others.
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But I don't want to overcome it anymore.
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I love it.
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I just needed to bring it
to a healthy size,
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so it doesn't stand in the way
of deeper relationships anymore,
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but even help me to connect with people.
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So, if you have an inner monster
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that is born out of negative emotions,
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it is not only the goal
to kill that monster
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but to understand that we humans
are complex beings.
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Look at what part of your life
is so big that others fall short.
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Look at what emotions you barely feel
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or maybe feel too much
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and move towards lowering those peaks.
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Most of all, it's about understanding
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that all the wide range
of emotions and struggles
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makes us what we are:
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humans.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
eric vautier
At 3:08, the subtitles say "many others", but the speaker says "many artists". Could you fix it? Eric
Camille Martínez
Please note the following update to the English transcript:
3:08 many others --> many artists
Thank you for the edit, Eric.