Donovan Livingston, an educator and spoken word artist, delivered a commencement speech at Harvard that went viral, accumulating millions of views within days. His address was not a traditional speech but a spoken word poem — a form that itself embodied his message about the power of giving students a platform to express themselves in their own way. This line came from the emotional center of the poem, where Livingston recalled his seventh-grade teacher, Ms. Parker, who told him 'we can put your excess energy to good use' and introduced him to spoken word poetry. Rather than punishing his disruptiveness, she channeled it. She gave him a stage. The ladder metaphor reframed storytelling not as entertainment but as infrastructure — a means of reaching what would otherwise be unreachable. For a spoken word poet standing at the lectern of one of the world's most prestigious universities, the line carried autobiographical weight. Livingston's own story — from a disruptive kid to a Harvard graduate — was itself the ladder he was describing. The repetition of 'climb and grab them' transformed the poem into an incantation, urging the audience to act rather than merely listen.