After a week of exam, finally I have a time to breathe…pfff…Even though I still have some papers to do, I feel a bit relax. Temporarily leaving my school texts, I read Paulo Coelho book: Like the Flowing River, a collection of short stories. I enjoyed my silent cold nights in Dundee, reading the book until I fallen asleep.

         The story of a pencil is a conversation between a grandma and her grandson. She teaches him about qualities of life and the philosophy of pencil. Pencil has five qualities, if we manage to lean on them, will make us become a peaceful person on earth. I have a conversation with my self when I read the story (bold line are my words, the other are taken from the Paulo's writing).

First  quality: "just like a pencil, we are capable of great things,

but we must never forget that  there is a hand guiding our step. We

call that a hand of God that guides us according to His will".

I agree with this one, sometimes we forget for being

humble and too proud of our achievement. In fact, we can not dictate our wishes. Even if we plan  our every step with full of details, reality might be different. A certain thing in life  is uncertainty. We can die anytime, and even we  can not reject the death when its come. How can we consider ourselves great?  

Second quality: "pencil use sharpener that makes the pencil suffer little but afterwards, he is much sharper. So we must bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make us a better person".

 Indeed, sad time and trouble are little training to make us stronger and more patience.  Everybody has their own problems that need to be solved. In the saddest time of life, we have to remember that God will not let us to bear burdens more than our capacity.

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 bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice".

 To what extend we need an eraser? Since there is no mistake in life but lesson, I think we need not rub out our mistakes. Sometimes we have to look back to see the past lesson before moving forward and find the road to justice. Don't erase the mistakes, because erasing them will make us forget. We don't necessarily need to erase something we did for a correction. However, we can use eraser for changing negative mind into positive one. For now on, I will erase  "I am not beautiful" and "I am broke" in my mind and change them into words "I am fully blessed" and "I am lucky".

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".

Well yes, I think it is important to be honest and fair to ourselves. We often neglect our own feeling and not become ourselves to follow society's order. We value something by its appearance; meanwhile the essential thing is invisible to the eye. In my society, it is a bit strange for a woman for still being single in my age. That cultural view is bothering me.  I marry someone not because society wants to, but because I want to. Happiness is about feeling inside our heart.  Respecting society's norm doesnt mean I have to ignore my own feeling. 

Fifth quality: "pencil always leaves a mark. In just the same

way, we should know that everything we do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action".

                        Life is about how we use the chance, life is about self-responsibility. How do you spend the time of your life? For doing good, bad or even nothing? It is difficult for drawing a strict line to limit what are good, bad and nothing. That's way we need conscience. Conscience will help us to decide what is suppose to do and not to do. It helps us to identify the impact of our decision. Conscience will make us to take responsibility for the choices we made, and not to run away. I guess, that's a mark of our life.