Original thought

I'm beginning to think that I've never had one, that all my thoughts are just amalgamations and repetitons of other people's thoughts. This has been occurring to me often lately as I write in this blog. I feel that, most of the time when I comment on something, someone else has probably already made that comment, and more insightfully; nothing I write is new. This is rather devastating from a creative and intellectual standpoint - am I just parroting what I heard elsewhere? And even if I haven't read or heard a specific idea elsewhere, am I just putting it together in a way that is so obvious that many, many others have already done the same long before me?

Is it enough if a thought or concept is new to me? Am I able to lend some flavor of my own to its discovery and discussion that makes my contribution worthwhile? Do I have any of that true creative genius that makes something original, to be a first generator?

I think I sound like an architecture student always trying to come us with some new form, pursuing newness for its own sake. I've always thought that was generally silly, and that it was enough to just do something of excellent caliber that really suits the purpose, even if you're not the first to do it. But for some reason, lately I've been understanding the pressure of originality.

Perhaps all of us are being original, when we put something together in a way that comes specifically from who we are, no matter whether it is similar to what has come before. Or maybe we all copy, building on and borrowing from each other. Are those things really mutually exclusive?