People chase the badge of being “first.”
They edit timelines. Plant flags.
They claim they had the idea years before anyone else.
There’s no such thing as a truly original idea.
Just like there’s no static version of you.
My mom used to read us a short story called “Nicholas New Every Morning.”1 Each day Nicholas went to school dressed as someone different—a pirate, a cowboy—until one day he showed up simply as himself. That stuck with me: you wake up different every morning. So do ideas.)
Every “new” thought is just an old one, reshaped. Reworked. Rebooted.
What makes it matter isn’t novelty.
It’s how it comes alive through you.
Old and new are just different kinds of wrapping.
The real gift is the perspective inside.
(Unless you’re a baby—then yes, the wrapping paper wins every time.)
That’s why the obsession with being first misses the point.
It doesn’t matter who thought of it.
What matters is who makes the connection—right here, right now—for the people who need it.
Ideas aren’t owned. They’re carried.
Each of us holds them for a while, turns them over, adds our fingerprints, and passes them along.
And if Wisdom Reboot has a “first,” maybe it’s this:
We were the first to say that rebooting wisdom matters more than inventing it.
I said it the day before I was born—so it must be true.
I’ve tried to track down the short little story Nicholas New Every Morning that my mom used to read to us. No luck. Something so memorable can disappear without a trace. The story stayed, even if the wrapping vanished.