Why do I hide where my ideas really come from?

Watch yourself the next time someone asks who taught you, or what you were reading when you made this. Notice the small flinch, the vague answer, the quick turn toward 'I just followed my instinct.' That turn is the tell. Underneath it is a fear that naming a teacher subtracts something from you — as if originality were a birth certificate, proof of coming from nowhere, rather than what it actually is: a particular way of gathering what came before. The tradition you minimize is not a debt you owe. It is simply where you stood when you began to see. Denying it does not make the view more yours. It only makes you a less reliable narrator of your own eyes.