On Being Original

How many people in the world are there now? Six billion? The number doesn't really matter. It's a lot of people. I ask myself now and then, what will it take in the future to come up with an original idea--something no one else has thought of? The answer comes to me now and then in a way that makes me want to kick myself. Hard. It will be very hard.

I wrote a book and it sits on my closet shelf getting dusty and yellowed while I screw up the courage to someday maybe send it to a publisher. In the meantime, I read, read, read, and die agonies when yet another author out there has written something with MY IDEA in it! And I tell myself, those publishers are going to think I just ripped off this author, when the truth be told, I wrote my book before this guy, or at least before I read his work. So as time goes by, I feel less and less inclined to enter the fray since what I have done will be nothing new under the sun.

And yet the author of life keeps making new people every day, each one never seen before. And astronomers keep finding new galaxies, all unique and thrilling beyond belief. And biologists keep finding out that life is much more complicated than they thought, and so intricately lovely. And artists, musicians, and actors keep creating exquisitely beautiful expressions.

So maybe there is hope after all that I, the only me in the whole world, in my individual originality, could create something that I could call all my own...