Creativity Quote by David Friedman

There is a small, almost comic sting in the timing here: the thing Friedman insists he was born to do shows up at the end of the line. The sentence carries the emotional rhythm of a punchline, but the subtext is less jokey than resigned. It treats vocation not as a lightning-bolt revelation but as a delayed diagnosis - something you discover only after trying on other selves.

As a working musician, Friedman is also sneaking in a critique of how talent gets sorted. Composition is often framed as the “highest” musical calling, the cerebral endgame after you’ve paid your dues as a performer. By saying it “came last,” he flips that hierarchy into a biography: the industry, the training pipeline, even the daily grind of gigs can steer you away from the very work that fits you best. It’s not just that he found composition late; it’s that the system makes it easier to be useful than to be true.

The phrasing “definitely” does a lot of work - a musician’s version of certainty after years of trial-and-error, as if the proof had to accumulate. And “born to do” isn’t mystical here; it’s retrospective clarity, the kind you earn only after you’ve lived through the wrong options. The line lands because it captures a familiar adult reality: purpose can be real without being immediate, and “last” doesn’t mean “least,” it means hard-won.