Another excerpt from Coelho

I am back with Coelho again! Can't seem to help it! :-) This is one of his best articles in the book "Like the flowing river". Many must have already read it before, but it is something that I would like to preserve and read again and again. Hence this post. Here goes:

The Story of the Pencil

A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter.
At one point, he asked:
‘Are you writing a story about what we’ve done? Is
it a story about me?’

His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said
to her grandson:
‘I am 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 didn’t
seem very special.

‘But it’s just like any other pencil I’ve ever seen!’

‘That depends on how you look at things. It 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. 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.

‘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 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
conscious of that in your every action.’