Peculiar Okafor: The Simplicity of Pencils & Erasers

Remember when we were little, just starting out school and we wrote in our 2A, 2B and 2D exercise books with those fancy pencils with erasers on their bottom?- well mine didn’t have erasers for long because I always chewed them off.  We could easily erase whatever mistake we made as we wrote down letters of the alphabet and simple arithmetic as all we had to do was turn the pencils the other way and wipe off the error. As we grew older and moved into more senior classes, the fancy pencils were replaced with HB pencils and this time erasing mistakes wasn’t so easy, one had to reach into a stationery or math set for an eraser as your eraser could easily get stolen if you left it on your desk. In the upper primary school classes, our pencils were finally replaced with Biros. We moved further in our scholarly pursuits with various forms of pens, and we no longer had the luxury of simply erasing our mistakes. We cancelled them and had to look at these cancellations whenever that page in our notebooks was opened.

This pencil and pen situation seems to ring true in the lives of most of us as well.  It seems that the older and more sophisticated we get, the more we lose the ability to simply shrug things off and let go. I’m yet to see a child undergoing therapy for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder caused by getting his/her hands burnt by a candle fire. The child simply cries, learns never to go so close to fire anymore, is scared of all forms of light for a while and eventually moves on.

As children, we played, had adventures and laughed off pain easily after crying for a while and few of us had unresolved issues but it seems as we got older and more intelligent with the ability to analyse, interrogate and read between the lines, it became complicated. Your sister’s room was no longer painted blue because it’s her favorite colour but because it signifies the fact that she is prone to depression and hence is always attracted to blue. We are sworn never to forgive our mum or that our friend. We are mean people because we are hurting and hence we hurt others…. Please guys, enough. LET IT GO.

No moaning, bitching, complaining or criticizing in 2014. If you didn’t get that promotion, open your eyes to see what you hadn’t been able to see and if you are really convinced you are being victimized then take steps to get a new job. If someone ends a relationship with you, accept it gracefully, call your friends, cry, drink some beers if you want and move on. No imagining he’ll come back to you and it’s certainly no excuse to become a play boy or a bitter girl totally sworn off men.

I’m not advocating we live recklessly or throwing caution to the wind, because as we grow older, our mistakes could have more grave consequences. Hence there is a need  for prudence in decision making, but even when we do our best, we could still make mistakes. When we do all we can do, we learn our lessons and move on because in this game of life, you just gotta keep moving.

Guys, it’s time to let go; have a life, forgive ourselves, and everyone and move on. Holding on to pain and negative emotions is goddamn ‘Crinkum Crankum’.

Now get me some erasers.

Photo Credit: flickr.com
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Peculiar Okafor is a marketing communications executive and loves to write. Visit her blog www.designersuitcases.blogspot.com to read her stories.