What an Example Actually Does

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There is a concept sometimes called possibility space. It refers to the range of futures a person can genuinely imagine for themselves. Not what they have been told is possible, but what feels real and available from where they are standing. Most people's possibility space is shaped by what they have seen. If you have grown up in a household where no one went to university, the idea of university exists in your mind as a fact about other people, not as a fact about your life. If everyone in your family has worked the same type of job for three generations, starting a business sounds real as a concept but not as something you might actually do. This is not pessimism. It is how the imagination works. We can only build on what we have seen. We imagine by extending what is familiar. And this is exactly what an example does. An example extends what is familiar. It takes something that existed only in the abstract and places it in the concrete, with a real person attached to it who faced real obstacles and came from a real place. When a young woman from Lagos sees another young woman from Lagos who built something significant, the message is not just 'it is possible.' The message is 'it is possible from here.' That last two words change everything. An example does not just illustrate a point. It expands a world.