Back when I first started writing (and it was years ago), I hung a quote on my wall above the computer that I read every time I started typing. I don’t know who said it, but it was powerful. Side note: have you ever noticed how many powerful things are said by people whose names have long since been forgotten?
Anyway, the words I saw each time I started writing were:
True originality lies not in saying what has never been said, but in saying what you have to say.
It’s such an important reminder because the pressure to write something that has never been written before or to have a thought that has never been expressed before is daunting. Actually, it’s daunting because it’s impossible. In the first chapter of arguably the most depressing book in the Bible, the wisest man on the planet began his twelve chapter pity party with this Debbie Downer:
“Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new.” (Ecclesiastes 1:10 NLT)
Now that will make you rethink the effort it takes to create something! Why put all that time into writing, sewing, painting, thinking, crafting, or any other -ing you want to throw in there just to realize it’s already been done? It reminds me of the summer I was at church camp and I stayed in the chapel long after the service was over and wrote my very first worship song. It was powerful, and anointed, and when I played it for my friend, it turned out to also be the same melody as another popular worship song. I had simply written new words to it. But here’s the thing: even though I never made that a public worship song, it was a very real and personal expression of what the Lord was doing in my young heart. In man’s eyes, it was a ripoff, but in God’s eyes, it was beautiful.
You and I were made to create, not because there are new things to be discovered, but because there are new expressions of old things to be realized. If it’s true that we were made in the image of God (and it is), then we’re a lot like the Creator when we’re creative. We think of creating as a way to make something else come to life, but as it turns out, we come alive when we’re creating!
Let me leave you with this quote from author Howard Thurman. I hope that it inspires you to get busy creating as much as it does me.
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Sure, it’s probably already been done before, but it wasn’t done by you. And when you do it — whatever it is — the life you feel will remind you that you aren’t done.
