The Story of the Pencil

A boy was watching his grandmother writing a letter. At one point he asked, “Are you writing a story about what we have done? Is it a story about me?” His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson, “I’m writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up.” Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. “It doesn’t seem very special, but it’s just like any other pencil I have ever seen,” said the boy. “That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world,” answered his grandmother. “The first quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. The second quality: now and then, it has to stop working and needs sharpening. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, it’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person. The third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It helps to keep us on the road to rightness. The fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil isn’t 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 conscious of that in every action of yours.”