Nothing new

“There’s nothing new under the sun.”

This phrase — from Hebrew scripture — has become part of the culture.

It’s easy to toss around with an air of cynicism. “Not new. Been done. Unoriginal.”

So for the creative, this can feel like a burden. Why create when it’s all been done before?

But there’s another way of seeing this: it’s a gift. Since nothing is new, we have no pressure to be original. We can recreate. We can be influenced. We can be inspired. We can rhyme with what has come before. We can add our voice to the ever-growing symphony of human creativity.

Despite nothing new under the sun, our creativity persists.

Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” is a Bob Dylan song. Donatello created marble and bronze versions of David long before Michelangelo’s time. There were a half-dozen search engines competing for market share when Google was developed.

Whether anything is new or not … it doesn’t really matter. At our core, we’re creators, makers, innovators, and inventors. Sometimes we fail, but sometimes we make things surprisingly better.