Be a Pencil

The pencil, "has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.

First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. ....

Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharperner. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he's much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

Third quality: 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 us to keep us on the road to justice.

Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you."

Finally, the pencil's fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be concious of that in your every action."

~Paul Coelho in page 10-11 of "Like the Flowing River" ~