What have you done that nobody else has done?

What have you done that nobody else has ever done? Keep in mind that billions of people have lived since human beings were first recognized as such, so this is a difficult question. Or is it?


For example, you may have washed your dishes today using a technique you invented that nobody else has used, at least on your dishes. If you want to get technical, we all do things nobody else has done every day, from getting up out of our own beds to driving our individual routes to work.


However, I’d like to talk about accomplishments that have more cosmic significance and give more satisfaction than just washing our dishes in a unique way. But don’t take offense; I realize that washing dishes is very important in a civilized society.


If you are a writer, or a reader who writes occasional reviews for Goodreads.com, I maintain that you are doing significant things that nobody else has done. You are putting combinations of words together in a way nobody else ever has. If you write something that goes much beyond “Dear Grandma, thank you are the present.” this is true . You don’t have to be Shakespeare to do this. Writing letters, emails and even tweets qualify.


When I was in high school I had to memorize some lines from Macbeth that start, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…”. For some reason I can still remember them quite accurately, even though I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. Shakespeare’s words are deathless.


So are yours, even if the only people who have read them except yourself are your grandmother or your twitter followers. And not just because all the tweets that have ever been written are being saved for posterity, whoever that is.


Words are important, especially written words, and we should take appropriate care when we write them. The poet, the playwright, the novelist and the nonfiction writer are all creating new combinations of words that express ideas. So are journalists, blog writers, book reviewers, and authors of letters, emails and tweets. Well, perhaps not all writers of emails and tweets. Some of them are mundane, unoriginal and downright boring.


However, if we take pride in what we write, we can alleviate the boredom and raise the quality of our prose or poetry to a higher level. Then perhaps more people will want to read it.


We all want to soar like the birds—
Distinguish ourselves from the herds.
To do it is fun;
You’ll know when you’re done,
You’ve written original words.


See, I’ve just written a limerick I’m sure nobody else has ever written before. I know some of you are thinking, Thank God nobody has written that trash before. But you get the idea. Now put on your thinking cap and write something original