Desire

I wish I lived back with Da Vinci. I wish the world were harder to live in but simpler to master. Where anything could be true because nothing was known to be. I wish that I could be one of the first to think about how the world works and not just simply how to live in it. I wish that I could discuss with Michelangelo. I wish I could theorize with Socrates. I wish that I were the person to inspire revolutions. I wish I could muse with John Locke. I wish I could study van Gogh at work.
I wish I didn't live where everything was so immediate and therefore so hard to be original. I wish the world were a place that didn't have everything solved for me. I wish I could go back.

But I cannot. The world is what it has become and I have had an extremely small impact on the world in the seventeen years I've lived in it. But that doesn't mean that originality is dead. That doesn't mean that greatness is over, that the world is going downhill. If anything being original in this version of the world, the world where originality is almost impossible, is more commendable than the work of Demosthenes.

The base is what we look to for inspiration, but it is never the prettiest part of the building. The beauty is in the final touches, the details that someone else might overlook. The swirling staircase or the striking chandelier. The foundation was not put there to be recreated or longed for, it was put there to build on. We must be ever striving to improve everything around us.
Although some say it is a lost cause, know that originality is ever forthcoming. It cannot be stopped because non-originality is never complete. One can recreate work in the exact in the same process the original was made. The result may be the same, but the journey is guaranteed to be different.

 Strive to be original. Da Vinci painted masterpieces and Plato drew a mental universe. But you have something no one else has: your perspective of the world that can create anything it wants. Do what you can to create a new world. The foundation may be poured, the house may be built, the furniture may even be placed, but even Michelangelo added the last of the Sistine Chapel. You may not make a huge impact, but your creation will be more beautiful than what any of our predecessors did and what any of our posterity could do for the simple fact that it was made by you.