In this world in which the vast transfer of knowledge drowns the young people attempting to obtain a degree, a whole new probable has emerged.
We, as young, thriving minds, have been taught that we cannot possibly think of anything new. We must site everything that we use. Even if we do think of a new way to think of something, we must support it with other peoples work.
I’m not saying that this is completely a bad thing. Learning not to plagiarize and learning to use others knowledge to support your own opinion is a glorious tool. However, were does it end?
I noticed today that every time I think of doing or writing something innovative and exciting that I just thought of I immediately think, “Well, what if I don’t really know what I’m talking about and someone who does calls me out and ruins my career forever by pointing it out.”
For example, today I was in an observant mood and noticed a common trait among my fellow classmates in a class and was momentarily convinced that this common trait was a result of such and such. Then I immediately thought: well I bet if I looked it up some psychologist has already proved or disproved it. I was then completely unmotivated to write the little tid-bit I was so inspired to write about just a few seconds earlier.
I know that I could easily ignore these thoughts and write it anyways. But just the thought, one I can’t avoid at least having for a moment, is so discouraging.
Is there nothing left in the world to write about that someone else won’t respond to in such a way: “Oh, that sounds exactly like an essay I read by (insert famous/ not-so-famous writer here).”
I know that I am in fact wrong. There is always something to write about. Like this, writing about nothing to write about. But I’m sure it has all been done is some way or form. But the main point: we have been taught that we can’t think originally.
Depressing. I’ll have to get over this eventually.
PS: AFTER I wrote this I remembered a poem I read by Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry. Read it and tell me if you don’t find that Ironic.
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The Trouble with Poetry
The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach on night—
cold Florida sand under my bar feet,
a show of stars in the sky—
the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.
And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world.
and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.
Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.
But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.
And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.
And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my ankles
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti—
to be perfectly honest for a moment—
the bicycling poet of San Francisco—
whose little amusement park of a book
I used to carry in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.
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