But interestingly I come across many changes in this phase. Noticeably one thing, I stopped giving much attention to what others say about me. It is for good, I hope! I was a very conscious person all the time, for me actions matters than what we talk. I don’t believe in talking and doing nothing, so practically all my life, I talk less and my actions speaks for me.
Coming to the main matter, today morning I started reading Paulo Coelho book “Like the Flowing River”. Something snapped inside me. Here is the excerpt from one chapter
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 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.’
P.S. We all have/had known this kind of thing already ,read or heard, but we may have forgotten the essence of this, bcoz we are travelling in a fast moving mad world. I don’t think people have time to listen to others and of course they don’t have time to listen to their inside. When some of them listen to their inside and do good things, then it looks very odd to others, for them running is important, talking is important, the time being well spent is important. It is kind of selfish act.
Even my friend Neetha Nair on her post Of Give and Take says , that helping others is also like a selfish thing, it is to satisfy own mind or get a good name for us, I totally agree, but the main fact is, in that selfish act, some of them get help from others. More or less, the purpose is solved, you are satisfied and in your selfish acts some of them also satisfied. Give and take !!!!!
Well, when I started reading the book, first thing that strikes me, is the explanation. At least we can tell this to our kids, let them be a pencil, rather than running to survive in this world as a mere living species, let them be a human being. Anyway I loved that chapter and I liked to share it with u. I hope you liked it. I want to write more now, but then the post will go on and on..so I stop here. May be some other time a full post about this.
Have a wonderful weekend friends. God Bless!!!
Really nice one
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