Pencil’s Fan Boy

When I was a kid my parents never gave me the opportunity of having fancy school things, like a beautiful and thick notebook, a pen with 10 different colors, a nice pencil-case, a big backpack with dozens of compartments, but I never complained. My father always bought everything in volume to save money. So, if I wanted parents sponsorship for school materials, I had to use the standard notebook, the standard pen, the standard everything.

I’m not sure, but I think because of that I became addicted to stationary stuff, mainly pencils. I cannot see a new pencil release and not buy it. I simply love them, not because they are practical and cheap, but because they are classical, remind me of my wonderful childhood, and allow me to make mistakes without screwing the paper up, which usually happens when we try to erase pen traces. They also help me to write better because looking at a white paper and a discrete pencil there is not so much visual pollution or other computer alerts to take out my attention. Yes, it takes time, of course, since I still have to type everything later, but it makes me revisit the text for further improvements. So, when the text is not urgent, I will certainly write it down on paper before you read it.

Actually, my motivation to write this post came from another post written by Paulo Coelho, a famous Brazilian writer. He wrote a chat between a boy and his grandmother about 5 qualities pencils have to inspire us to be better persons. The qualities are:

1. We are capable of great things, but we must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.
2. From time to time, we have to stop writing and use a sharpener. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, it’s much sharper. So, we must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make us better persons.
3. The pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.
4. What really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So we must always pay attention to what is happening inside us.
5. Finally, the pencil always leaves a mark. In just the same way, we should know that everything we do in life will leave a mark, so let’s try to be conscious of that in our every actions.