Meditation 3 Pencil

A six-sided sliver of wood with a chalky graphite rod speared through the center, and a pasty lump of rubber clipped on top, this cliché mustard yellow pencil serves for far more valuable purposes than could ever begin to do it justice. It is a story teller, a composer, a mathematician, an artist, and ultimately an extension of our very own flesh and thought. It is creation; conveying precision and emotion that no keyboard or touchscreen could ever produce. Much like our own human frailty, the more stories it tells, the shorter it becomes. But remarkably, at the flick of a hand, this simple tool has the profound ability to erase its own mistakes. It can preserve the details of the past, manifest a new future, and even document the very happenings of the present. It is basic enough to be a staple to every child’s backpack, yet sophisticated enough to hold a permanent place on the desks of the worlds most powerful business moguls. Free from the conformity of a set number of computer fonts, the unique loops and curves that are produced when writing with a pencil serve to speak for the writers originality and soul. Personally, a pencil is like a close friend whom I’ve known for years. It was with me when I learned to write, struggled through my math homework, comforted my sadness with poetry, and fabricated works of art. It is for those reasons, that after a long day, I choose to write, not type, to ease my mind, always keeping my small wooden friend near and dear to my heart.