They Didn't Steal Your Idea
Between 1610 and 1612, sunspots were independently discovered by at least four different astronomers in England, Frisia, Italy, and Germany. None knew of the others’ research.
Oxygen was discovered in 1773 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. One year later, and without knowledge of Scheele’s discovery, Joseph Priestley also discovered oxygen.
The electrical telegraph was invented by Charles Wheatstone in England, and separately by Samuel F. B. Morse in America. Both in 1837.
In music, Viennese composer Arnold Schoenberg is credited with developing the twelve-tone approach to music composition, which became one of the most influential approaches of the 20th century. Another Viennese composer, Josef Hauer, had sketched ideas for a twelve-tone approach a year or so before Schoenberg.
Sometimes an idea’s time has just…arrived.
“The artist is on a cosmic timetable,” writes legendary music producer Rick Rubin, in his must-read recent book The Creative Act. “If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.”
Your job as an artist is to be receptive to the ideas around you. First be receptive. Then, bring the ideas to life. And don't delay.
“How does the cloud know when to rain?” Rubin writes. “How does the tree know when spring begins? How does the bird know when it’s time to build a new nest?”
If an idea strikes you, and you later find that it was expressed by someone else, don’t be resentful. That would be like a tree resenting its neighbor for beating it to bloom in spring.
Instead, be at peace. Know that your awareness is growing. And each flower blooms in its own time.
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P.S. If you want more insights from Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act, you can sign for my free email series, 5 Days of Insights from Rick Rubin. I'll send you one email a day for five days, each with a thought-provoking or actionable idea from the book. Click here to get the insights.
P.P.S. The Rubin quotes are from pages 6–7 of his book. Steven Johnson talks about simultaneous inventions in his thought-provoking book, Where Good Ideas Come From. I highly recommend it—he discusses many other intriguing concepts, such as the “adjacent possible.” There was an interesting article on simultaneous inventions written in 1922 called “Are Inventions Inevitable? A Note on Social Evolution,” by William F. Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas, in Political Science Quarterly. You can read it here.
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