kentonwhitman.com

Walking with Rebecca and our friend Jen the other day, we came upon a #2 pencil lying on the ground. It was the sort of pencil that had character — tooth marks suggested that its former owner had chewed on it, even going so far as to put tooth to metal, since the eraser sheathe was a bit misshapen.

I picked it up and looked at it for a moment. I had to resist the urge to put it in my mouth — in school I, too, had been a pencil chewer (the texture is oh-so-delightful), and since these days I use pen or keyboard, it had been some time since I had held a pencil in my hand . . . or mouth.

Inappropriate jokes aside for a moment (read that last sentence again and think with your ‘dirty’ mind), once I got past the chewing urge, a delightful thought passed through my mind.

“This,” I said to my two companions as I held the pencil, “is a story. It’s a scattering of poems, and it’s thoughts in someone’s journal.”

You see, our mind learns to see things in one way or another. To one person, a forgotten pencil might be just sort of nothing — something to pass by without a second glance. To another, it might be trash that should be picked up and thrown in the garbage. To the children I remember from my adventure in Nepal, it was a treasure — we’d often be approached by kids asking us for pencils or pens. And to someone else, it’s poetry and tales just waiting to be scribed.

The magic happens when we can observe our mind’s tendency to instantly label everything around us. This is good, that it bad, another thing is meant for such-and-such a purpose. Yet our minds could look at each thing so differently! What might it feel like if our minds did not lock down so quickly, but could see the pure ‘useless’ usefulness of every thing and every moment?

I set the pencil back on the ground. It looked rather pretty surrounded by grass. Besides, who knew if some thoughtful poet might walk by just a bit later in the day, pick up that pencil and set it to paper, and write a poem that would change the hearts of people throughout the world?

Magic, it seems, is everywhere. Even in a chewed-up #2 pencil lying in the grass.