“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.” — Mark Twain
Imposter syndrome along with fear of failure always leaves me mocking my own ideas. I often think about all the things that I wanna do or that I could be doing and I even put time and effort to research on those subjects but it all always ends in the same way. With me leaving out a sigh and thinking “Too late. There is no demand for it. It’s all been done”. For some reason, it seems as if I’m going to do “something”, it has to be original and authentic and this just always leaves me where I started because I can’t find anything that hasn’t been done because all the blogs have been written and all the literature has been analyzed.
Interestingly, Mark Twain does not believe in originality. For him, all of our thoughts have been recycled in one way or another. In his essay, “What is Man?” Twain says “the utterer of a thought always utters a second hand one”. For him, it’s always the various outside influences that impact our ideas and thoughts. When I think about this idea of “originality” that has been stopping me from moving forward, I realize that everything has always evolved from another thing. Edison invented bulb because the concept of an artificial light was already present in the form of candles and lanterns. People came up with lanterns because they realized the need of portable light. Email was only invented because the concept of mail already existed. It’s not that these people came up with original ideas, but they manipulated the original concept and created it’s own unique demand. There was no demand for bulb, but the demand for light has always existed.
Quite a while ago, I came across this YouTube channel “Baba Food RRC”. What they basically did was, instead of branding it as just another cooking channel, they marketed their recipes as commercial recipes. From what I understand, the owner already had a history of working as a chef throughout his life so he used his skills, knowledge and experience to standout from other typical cooking channels. In addition to explaining the recipes that are used commercially in restaurants and food businesses, he also gives instructions to his audience on how they can set up their own businesses and also guides them on pricing, quality and storage. Deconstructing it has been quite interesting and has made me view the concept of originality in a different way.
There are more than 7 billion people in the world and it is very likely that the content you’re producing, is the content someone out there is consuming. There is always room for our ideas regardless of how absurd or repetitive we think they are. However, imitating others in their patterns and methods isn’t the way to go for. The context is always recycled but the patterns and implications shouldn’t be extracted exactly as they are from others. It’s not that hard I guess. We all have qualities that make us who we are whether it’s the language we use with our peers or our favourite Street food. The demand is only generated by being ourselves. This is how we become authentic rather than being original.
-Falaque
