Pen or Pencil...

This evening I am having the Biostatic quiz before the lecture ended. The questions were projected on the screen and we need to answer both of the questions. After reading the question, I had pop out with a silly question that sound: “Miss X, can I use pencil to answer the quiz?”

Well, an university student is asking the lecturer whether he can use a pencil to answer his quiz or not. At first I thought it was nothing. I assume it is part of the jokes of the day. After hearing the answer from Miss X, I suddenly think that it is a joke of my life. Her answer is: “Hmm, answer it with pen la…this must be very not confident with yourself. That is why you want to use pencil.”

Like usual, I will deny most of the answer provided by this Miss X. however, this time I had a very different feeling. I had thought a lot about what she said throughout the quiz. My dear reader, think twice…when do we use pencil to write most of the things in our daily lives? When do we use pen to write down all the important notes daily? Think again…

When we are small, I mean when we are kid in the primary school, we were taught to use pencil to write and we were provided with an eraser. When we had written wrong, we can just simply erase the wrongly written letter or words. Then, we rewrite to correct the mistake written earlier. This somehow makes writing seem to have nothing wrong just that there are a bit dirt behind our writing. It sometimes seems to be like the water mark and make the writing perfectly match it.

As we grew older, we are into the maturity phase of our lives. As we enter this phase of life, we had come across many new things and new feeling that we seldom come across as a kid. On of the item being introduce is using the pen. I still remember when I was in Standard 6, most of my friends wanted to use a pen so badly in their homework. I was questioning myself about that. I am wondering why they so wanted to use a pen? For me both the pen and pencil are the same. This is especially black inked pen.

As I enter Form 1, we were asked and forced to use pen to manage our daily homework and teachers usually requires a blue inked pen for that. Just like pencil, we were being introduced with ‘liquid paper’ too. It is used to erase the faulty writing. However, the usage of the pen is very much different from using a pencil. When we had written something wrong with pen, we need to use liquid paper to correct it. The liquid paper will left the scar on the paper and it is very significant that we had written something wrong on the paper. Compare to using a pencil, we just erase it and that is it. Nothing much scar was left on the paper.

Thus, most of us later keep n asking the teacher whether we can use the pencil or not. Actually, it is whenever we were not confident to write down something, we will ask the teacher and request to use the pencil. Why?

This is so that we can correct the wrongly written items on the paper easily. If we use a pen, it takes time for the liquid paper to dry and rewrite the correct writing on the liquid paper sometimes is very difficult. Then, we were taught to just draw a horizontal line over the wrong written letter. This has lead writing to get worse. The paper with the essay writing was like a piece of art of line across the words and letter.

When look back this on me today. It has nothing much different. This is actually what life is as well. As a kid, when we had did something wrong, we can just erase it and correct what we had did wrong. Just like the pencil and eraser. It left nothing much scar on the paper. As we grew adult, this piece of paper will just become part of our memory and sometimes being forgotten as well.

In the adulthood, our lives are just like a pen and liquid paper. Every wrong step will leave a terrible scar on the paper. It takes longer time for use to correct something that we have did wrongly. It is just like waiting for the liquid paper to dry up before we can write the correct letter on it.

When we are kid, whenever we had did something wrong people will be very forgiving. Instead they will think that the wrong step taken by the kid will be the life long experience and it is also the teacher of life that the kid should bring to the last breath of life. However, human is living in reality and not in the ideal situation. We will forget this easily-forgiven lesson and keep on repeating the faults until some scar had permanently curved on our memories. That is why adult want to be kid so much. It is just like using a pencil with a eraser.

As we grew older, our memories and experience will also being piled up. At the same time, our faulty also increases. How do we really want to manage the faulty or mistakes that we had generated is very much depending on how we want to face the consequences. Last but not least, as an adult…we always have the choices to choose to either to use a pen or a pencil to write down our life on a piece of paper…when there are mistake, then you will question yourself…is pen or pencil better…my answer will be…no matter it is pen or pencil…you still have to write…that is life…..