If you've ever tried to have an original concept you know just how hard it can be to be "innovative." Everything's been said before. It's not impossible to find a new way to say it, though; that's how we develop trends. Trends are the general direction in which something is developing or changing, something like culture, or clothes. Those jean skirts with the front buttons? A '70s heirloom. Your "squad" was your "clique" or your "posse." Some trends are easily identifiable, staple items that you'll carry with you in your memories always. We all miss Lisa Frank but "creepers" come in metallics so you can look like Zenon once again. See, these new ideas and concepts we have are really just recycled and then marketed with fun new names.
Do not be disheartened, though--recycling old ideas is not always a bad thing. Think of trends as the world's ultimate thrift shop. Every so often we go back into the annals of hot products or slang words and we dust them off to let them have their day in the light again. But we're also an "out with the old and in with the new" society, so we adapt. We take the old idea and we give it a spin. We bring these ideas back to life. Some people might think this is cheating but it's not, it's evolution. The world isn't going to stop for any of us so we need to learn to adapt. We'll try old things with a twist until we have a breakthrough and someone can imagine something completely new. This doesn't make us lazy or incapable of having an original idea, it makes us humans with different realities. We're also not criminals for using old concepts and changing them up a bit to fit this century. Take that one fresh idea you have and mix it with the old. It's not wrong and it's not average of you to do it. That's the whole point of adapting, is to take what you have and make it worth with what you're being given.
In "The Social Network," Zuckerberg comments: "Look, a guy who builds a nice chair doesn't owe money to everyone who has ever built a chair, OK? They came to me with an idea, I had a better one." This is how ideas develop, this is what editing is for, to find a new perspective to something already familiar to us. Don't be afraid to bedazzle the hell out of an old essay. Use those creative juices built up in your body. Every table can be turned you just have to be willing to look at it from the other side. "Brand new" may not be inside all of us but "new" is. Bring yourself to see the world again.
Go ahead, build a nicer chair.
