No matter how unique we consider ourselves to be, we are dyed-in-the-wool copy cats. We can’t help it.

Unconscious emulation is popularly known as early learning. It’s “monkey see, monkey do” or “monkey hear, monkey do.”

There is nothing original about that.

The Christian theology of “Original Sin” suggests that we are born into a condition of imperfection. The idea is that we’re perfectly born into an imperfect world. It’s from that imperfect world that we learn our patterns and beliefs.

You have to listen no further than your pattern of speech to validate your unconscious unoriginality. My guess is that if you grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, you have a different accent that the people who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Your accent got in there by accident without your permission. So did lots of other unoriginal stuff.

Do you exhibit things that your parents did that you consciously swore you would never do? Figures of speech? Mannerisms? Beliefs? This realization usually happens when we become parents. Some unoriginal bon mot leaves our lips and we astonish ourselves when we recognize that, “I said that just like my mother/father/early caregiver.”

That’s when you know that you’re not an original.

So the question becomes: How do we become more original? We have to stop copying, as the nuns used to say to us, “from your neighbor’s paper.”

To change an unoriginal pattern of thought or behavior, you first have to recognize it as a copy. You also have to stop and realize that you got most of your unoriginality through osmosis. It just seeped in insidiously without your knowledge or consent.

Once you have the realization that you are presenting unoriginal ideas and behaviors, you arrive at the threshold of originality.

Each time we recognize our unoriginality, while it’s happening, we cross the threshold and get a little deeper into originality.

Originality doesn’t come from parrots or trained seals.

Originality and creativity are the same concept with different letters. They both come from a place where there are no stored ideas – a void that spawns originality.

The more often you enter that void, the more original you become.

We move from Planet of the Apes to Curious George when we begin to recognize how unoriginal we truly are.

All the best,

John

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