beaten to it

I've been pondering a certain legal tangle for a while now, and the other day on the subway I thought of a super answer, all by myself. So I started to write it up into essay form, and began researching the sources to look for supporting arguments, etc. Well, imagine my surprise when I found that a well-respected (let us say legendary) legal figure before me had come up with the same answer (the Beit Yosef, for those who care). On the one hand, this is sort of disappointing, because I would have liked to have thought of it first. On the other hand, I did think of it all on my own, so that has to be more or less a good thing.

And the BEST bit is that after Legal Figure #1 finishes describing all about how he thought of my idea, he says, essentially, "After I'd thought all this out on my own and written that awesome proof, I found someone else had had the same idea.." - so not only did me and Legal Figure #1 both think of the same idea, we both got beaten to it by someone else. This amuses me.