In an interview on the Today Show this morning, Kevin Breel reveals why he thinks his TED Talk has gone viral: not because his story is unique, but because it is so common.

Kevin Breel: Confessions of a depressed comic Breel’s talk, given at TEDxKids@Ambleside, has been watched about 1.5 million times so far. In it, the 19-year-old reveals that, while he seemed to be living a great life as a high school basketball player, he was actually contemplating suicide. He urges people to break the silence that surrounds depression because “as much as I hate some of the places that my depression has dragged me down to, in a lot of ways I’m grateful for it.”

On the Today Show, interviewer Willie Geist asks Breel about this bold statement.

“Life is about duality,” Breel says. “There’s happiness; there’s sadness; there’s light; there’s dark; there’s hope; there’s hurt. And I think that, for me, nothing in my whole life has ever helped me understand more about myself, more about others, more about life than dealing with depression.”

Watch the full interview with Breel embedded above. And watch his powerful talk »