I’ve discovered a few blogs of people similar to me, and with ideas similar to mine. People that are further along the path I too am on. Finding people like this and their blogs does two things for me, first: it makes me feel a little threatened – so strong is my desire to do something new, to do something groundbreaking, to capture that most illusive of abstractions: something wholly unique. Something that I can truly say that I created. Created. What an evocative word for me.

To be a creator.

This is something that thrills me, that stirs up passion in my soul, to be legitimately called a creator would be divine. Artists, revolutionaries, game-changers these people are creators. God is a creator, this is why I worship him,

“Why worship the crea-ted when one can worship the Crea-tor?” she said one day as we slowly paced along the streetlight lit pavement alongside Duxbury Street, Hatfield, Pretoria. Conversations on religion, philosophy, love, tears, tragedy, truth and mystery fresh on the mind,

“Why did you stop with the wika?” was my question. Because wika is no creator, just a plagiarism of true power, true creativity was her answer.

When I find that yet another idea of mine has already been done, when I find that someone else is already 30 years down the path I hoped to one day pioneer, it ceases to matter all that much that the pioneer who has preceded me is confirming the relevance, the greatness of my idea, or that I have a kindred spirit out there joining me in my cause, because my idea is no longer original. I… am no longer original.

So the quest for a new idea begins afresh. Maybe this shouldn’t be how it is though. Maybe I’m looking to the originality of my ideas too much for my value. Maybe I need a pride check, maybe I should seek acceptance and value in something else. Fundamentalist chirstians would answer this question with “God” – in a real world like the one outside of home-group does this answer hold up to the curse we live in though? Probably. But let’s not be crass with our platitudes, even right answers can be the wrong answers sometimes – check your relevance. Simple answers don’t work in a real world when they begin to approach ignorance.

Ignorance of the reality of the difficulty with which we must contend as we aim to make the simple truths these fundamentalists proclaim without the temperance gained through the acquisition of the perspective of those weighed down by the reality they can’t ignore.

The second thing finding these people and their blogs does for me comes after I reconfigure my system and find value somewhere else. Once this is done and my value as a human being is no longer dependant on this idea of mine being wholly original I feel my quest is affirmed.

And so I push on.

Jack Figure (aka Jeremy)