Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

And what she said next was astounding.

She said, it's crazy how it's that powerful.

She says something like, it makes me think about my own journey in education and how I want to go to college and hopefully be a scientist someday, right?

So she was likening her own experience to that girl's experience to see the similarity.

But then she moves even beyond that and says, I guess what really hits me, like what the emotion is about now, is how not everyone's able to get this chance to go forward with their life and get an education and do what they want to do with their life.

And she says, it's not right.

She moves from analyzing this one girl's sad situation, which is very difficult and makes her sad, to this much more powerful story about what it means for what's right in the world, what happens, what shouldn't happen, what could happen, and who she and that girl both are in the space of the broader world and what that means for what's right.

She has invented morality out of a story that was a specific example.

She's saying, it's my story too, but she even goes beyond that.

She goes all the way toward the end and says, it's not right.

It makes me feel upset that other people who live in certain parts of the world where they don't want people to learn are trying to hold them back, right?

She starts to understand that both she and this girl are part of an even bigger world.

So she goes from that girl to her own story to something even bigger than the two of them.

And she ends by saying,

Everyone everywhere should have the chance.

I mean, all human beings should be able to live free and choose their life future.

So she has invented an idea, a belief, a value about how the world should be for everyone.

from explaining and making sense of one girl's story, relating it to her own story, relating it to the possible future story she had hoped to invent for herself, and from there, thinking about what's right or good or possible everywhere for everyone.

Isela engaged in this thing we're calling transcendent thinking because her thinking moved from the current context.

and transcended that context to think also about what these examples mean for bigger ideas, for what's right or good, for how institutions work, for the intentions behind