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“The world is never saved by grand messianic gestures but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible, acts of compassion” says writer/poet Chris Abani (of "Graceland" fame) in this tender-hearted TEDTalk given a few years ago. Part-biographical, part-philosophical exploration on what it means to be human, Abani shares anecdotes about growing up under a military dictatorship in Nigeria in the 1980s and sharing a prison cell with inmates on death row. Throughout all this he discovers one important truth: “there is no way for us to be human without other people.”