I am not the creator of anything, I am a re-arranger of what has always been.

Many years ago, I was struggling with some of these same thoughts, and especially what it all meant in the context of being creative (a writer), and I had this dream:

I was in a business meeting, with a bunch of guys in suits, all sitting around a giant conference room table. We were all high paid executives of a candy company. Our task at the meeting was to invent new candy bars. There was this big pile of candy bars in the center of the table, the brands we all know from real life — Milky Way, Snickers, Payday, etc. One by one, my fellow executives took turns grabbing two known candy bars of the table, cutting them in half, and jamming two disparate halves together (half Payday/half Milky Way, half Milky Way/half Snickers, like that). Each time they’d leap up and shout, “Look what I made! It’s amazing! The MilkyDay!” or “the SnickerWay!” Each time, all the executives around the table (except me) would cheer and whistle, and say things like, “You’re a F****ing genius! It’s so original! Why didn’t anybody think of that before!” I sat there, watching this, shaking my head…

When I woke up, I knew nobody really creates anything. We just rearrange what’s already here. I took it as a message from the same kind of god you’re describing here that making “total originality” a goal was stupid and impossible. A better goal was to be the best damned rearranger I could be.

Kind of like what I just did with your awesome post. See what I did there?