Yara Shahidi

If tradition is the result of repetition, then rupture is the introduction of something fresh.

It's bridging together two spaces often kept separate for the sake of achieving new ends.

And it's of insisting that there are possibilities outside of the ones we've been presented with.

But too often, dreaming is relegated to the academy and to Silicon Valley and to all of these exclusive institutions, when it is in fact the daily curiosities of every one of us that holds the most potential for rupture.

Now, if you aren't convinced just yet that you are a universe-shifting changemaker, then it is my duty as a history nerd to remind you that most of these leaders of these social change movements that we credit with giving us the world that we live in today, change was not their day job.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

was a preacher paying attention to the works of Gandhi across the ocean while reading Tolstoy.

But I also think of my own papa, who used his position within education to enfranchise black children in Madison, Wisconsin.

I think of my cousin, Anousheh Ansari, who went from looking up at the stars in Iran to flying to the space station.

I think about the protesters in Iran, led by women and children putting their lives on the line because they're curious about what a society looks like that values women, life and freedom.

Now, if it isn't clear, do you know what the byproduct of curiosity is?

Possibility, surprise!

Now, I've graduated from Harvard, and my television show is ending, and a couple years ago, this really would have terrified me, to leave two spaces that I know so well.

But because I've built a life centered on honoring my interests, everything from the Glockenspiel to Octavia Butler, I walk excitedly towards what's next, because I know somewhere between the two lies my next adventure.

Chasing curiosity means that my purpose is constantly unfolding in front of me.

All I have to do is pay attention.

And similarly, each and every one of us have a special set of interests that are totally unique to us, like a thumbprint.

So please join me in recommitting to curiosity, because honoring your so-called distractions is an act of creating.

It's to sit in the grandeur of all of our options.

It's to acknowledge our infinite possibilities when the world tries to convince us it is indeed finite.