The Pencil

THE PENCIL
By: David Trim

I have been recently looking into something that can be a metaphor for life and the best possible thing I can think of is a pencil. A pencil you ask. Well if you think about it, it is a great symbol for life. A pencil has a start and a finish and a beginning and an ending. I am not talking about a mechanical pencil like those you change lead and keep on going I am talking about the ordinary wooden pencil that we all used when we were in grade school. Here is my reasoning on why a pencil is a metaphor for life.

A new pencil is the symbol of birth. New and unused! Unsharpened and ready to start its journey. Taking that first step towards death and writing its own path along the way.

You start your journey by creating some memories just like you would sharpen a pencil to start your writing. You follow along your path creating your story until one day your lead breaks and sets you back a little. You have to stop think and then re-sharpen your wits and your pencil to get your life and story back on track. Many years down the road and many words written with this pencil you eventually stop for a while and live in a stagnant life until you must start writing again. Proceeding with your life as you would proceed in your story. Eventually you notice that you have sharpened your pencil a few times and you are out of school and living a life. Family, children, and pets come along and your story still continues until that one day you are finally down to the end of your pencil and you parish from this mortal coil. You can’t re-sharpen your pencil anymore because it would mean sticking your fingers in the sharpener and hell we never want to do that.

But now let us think about another aspect of the pencil that relates to life as well. For all those that do not get to live a full life or get to write their full story. Pencils break and pencils get lost. For those that get broken and thrown away are like those people that have lived their life and were taken from this world earlier than they should have been. There are even those pencils that have tragedy throughout the entire pencil. Your lead continues to break and you continue to have problems through your entire life and no matter how hard you try you can never actually get to go a while before your lead breaks again. Damn tragedy strikes again.

Eventually we all have to come to the realization that our pencil is going to end and we are eventually going to parish this world. Some of us have gotten chewed up along the way and others have lived a completely perfect life with no scratches or marks what so ever. Now I know that no one has the perfect life and their lead does not break once in a while but on the surface they look untouched, calm, and perfect in every way.

Now if you can even agree with me a little bit on this or even think that this in any way not even close to a metaphor for life then I challenge you to think of a better one. Write it down and pass it along but please never stop writing your own story at all.