Life as a Pencil
Paulo Coelho

It started off with a Grandmother writing a letter to
someone and her Grandson asked her if she was writing something about
their life like a story about him.

Taking her attention off the letter she told him that she
was indeed writing about him, but words didn't matter that much
what mattered the most is the pencil with which she's writing and she
hopes that he will be like this pencil when he grows up.

The boy being amused looks at the pencil and finds it
as ordinary as any other pencil. But the lady told him that it's the way
how you look at things and her pencil has 5 qualities that if you hang on to
will make him a person who is always comfortable with anything in this world.

First Quality: you are capable of great things, but you 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.

Second Quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener.
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 in the end.

Third Quality: the pencil 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 on the road of 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 of you.

Finally it'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 your every action.

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.
Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death".