They say that everyone’s a critic, and yeah, that is 100 percent true.
They say that "Hamlet", yeah the one by Shakespeare, was a copy of a Greek play even though the guy couldn’t read Greek, and today we have pop stars that are deemed “unoriginal.” But what does it really mean in the world today with nearly seven billion people on the planet to be original?
Today, to do anything in the creative realm, you need to be thought of as completely original and authentic. While that sounds like a short order and makes sense, with literally anyone criticizing or critiquing your “creativeness,” it can actually be pretty rough.
You have three choices*
- Be called unoriginal.
- Be called garbage.
- *Rarely do people allow you the third option of receiving credit for an original idea, but if you are lucky enough to hit the jackpot, then congrats. You’re like Oprah.
Being called unoriginal is, in my eyes, one of the biggest insults to your identity. It's saying that you are practicing speech or actions that are not yours and is bringing into question your motive for doing it because the critic seems to know you more that you know yourself.
Honestly, garbage is not the worst thing you can be called. You won’t make any money and your idea of getting paid for being a “creative” should end now.
Originality, I think, means owning that there really isn’t any part of you that hasn’t come from some other creative person before you. Unless you grew up in a hole and weren’t ever exposed to anything.
Originality is about recognizing that you are affected by the music on the radio that you hate and that one book you actually read in high school and all the times you’re just hanging out with your friends and talking. Every experience acts upon us as part of our creative nature, and that’s why Taylor Swift’s and Adele’s exes should have watched out.
Now, that’s not to say that all the original ideas are used up — we’ve got no more ideas left in the world so that’s it! No! But it is hard to think originally!
Why?
Well, to think originally, this means we need to be able or have the capacity to think that things can be different — that our would can be a different place than it is right now.
Someone had to imagine that we'd all be able to pull out devices and watch House of Cards anytime, anywhere. This was not an idea that was always around because our world was not yet big enough for it.
