Man is, as it has been known for centuries, not an island; if John Donne had not found out, we would have seen it again and again. I am in no position to deny that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein can have made their groundbreaking discoveries on their own; there are no stories about who was doctor Watson to the Sherlock Holmes of Thomas Edison, and Johann Sebastian Bach is not known as a participant in an artists' collective - but we who are of more average intelligence do best, when we have someone to bounce our ideas against.
Not because I am unable to get an idea every once in a while - but actually, I find one of the most interesting things for me to do is to act as a wall to the balls that people around me need to bounce to refine their ideas. Most likely, I would have been better as doctor Watson than I would have been as Sherlock Holmes.
(Translated from Noget om at være en mur, originally published May 9th, 2012)