A drop in the web

There are days when I am just in awe of all things human. It amazes me that despite the finite options of notes or cords- the music that people can create and are creating seems infinite. The creativity of people is amazing. The inventions/innovations that pop up all around me or that I use everyday that came from the mind of human is spectacular. So much of what I depend on was engineered by some brilliant and non-conforming mind. As a teacher, this is valuable to remember for me, I am lucky enough to sub so when I am not doing a long term job like I am now, I get to meet as many as 210 elementary students in a week. Spend a day with them, 30 at a time for about 6 hours, and let me tell you it doesn't take long to see their little personalities. And the tough ones, the non-conforming ones, I have to remind myself are likely going to be the ones inventing the next great thing, or creating music in a way that it has never been done before, or discovering cures for things, or performing on stage. This summer, for my friends bachelorette party, a group of us went to magic show. This guy was super odd and could do mostly math magic tricks. The whole time I was thinking- "I bet he drove his teacher nuts." I wanna be the type of teacher who really helps those kids- keeps them out of jail, or from medicating their creativity away, or help them realize their differences are important to us.

However, there are other days, when I feel like I have a great idea something to write about and then I look on Facebook and someone else has already written all about that thing I was gonna say, but they did it way better. Could it be possible that I might have something original to say in a time and place where I am surrounded by books, blogs, music, art, photography, plays, and movies crafted by millions of brilliant people? Is my voice worth adding to the deep, wide ocean of knowledge? To contrast my days of seeing all things as inventive, I also just think so many things are just being said over and over again- and sometimes just loosing their potency. In a shallow way, I have discovered just how unoriginal I can really be when I have use a hashtag on instagram thinking it is "like totally an original Bethany-ism" only to discover that thousands of other people must say that everyday. How can it be that the largest library in the world has 170 million items in it (British Library) and yet in America last year nearly 300,000 new books were published?! I am sure there are a percent of those publications that are saying the same thing, but even in writing my Master's thesis, I wrote some 100 pages, but so much of that was writing what other people had written in a slightly different way. But there is something great about creativity and humans that makes me think it really could be true that each new voice is worth the speaking, if not worth the listening to. And I so I will keep adding my drops to the big bucket that is the internet.