Yo Ma

Creativity as Your Compass Through Uncharted Worlds

Yo-Yo Ma’s invitation reframes uncertainty as a landscape to be navigated rather than avoided. A map demands known borders; a compass offers orientation when borders blur. Explorers once trusted a needle’s quiet fidelity when coastlines were incomplete, and artists do the same when stepping beyond familiar forms. Ma’s career—spanning Bach’s suites to global collaborations—models this posture: set a true north of values and curiosity, then move. With a compass in hand, the unknown becomes workable, because direction, not prediction, leads. [...]

Compose Beyond Self: Turning Obstacles Into Instruments

Moving from reach to purpose, impact endures when it meets a human need. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) argues that suffering can be transformed by service to something larger than oneself. In music, Leonard Bernstein famously conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1989 to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall, channeling historical fracture into communal hope. Likewise, your obstacles can become instruments when they attune you to others’ struggles. Experience of scarcity can fuel fairer systems; encounters with illness can inspire better care. As purpose aligns with expertise, the life you compose becomes a score others can play—offering themes they can carry into places you will never go. [...]

The Power of Unity Through Collective Harmony

Throughout history, societies have flourished when they've embraced multiple voices. The American civil rights movement, for instance, was propelled by activists from many backgrounds—fusing varied hopes and strategies into a resonant call for justice. Each participant brought their own perspective, but together, they formed a force far greater than the sum of its parts. [...]