Are You Living a Pencil Life?

“Freedom is a gift we give ourselves through our actions, choices, and decisions.” — Annelise Lords

After receiving the text about the judge’s decision, Staci Ingram waited, her eyes on the entrance of the building, watching through tinted glass. The entire building was made of tinted, thick plastic glass. Her heart beat rose as a familiar figure opened the door, entering her floor. Anna Holden swaggered towards her office, her confident smile saying she had just won the Nobel Prize for the cure for Cancer.

Staci breathed in and out softly, her anger rising, as Anna edged closer with a broader smile.

“We beat his ass!” she boasted as she shoved open the glass door, grinning with enough happiness to clean up half of the cruelty in our world, picking up speed as she walked towards Staci’s desk.

Staci grabbed another deep breath, returned the grin, but with sarcasm, then said, “You think so?”

“Hell yes!” she agreed, nodding her head, and plopping down in one of the armchairs facing Staci’s desk, browsing on her phone, “The judge handed his company to our client. All eight million dollars' worth!”

“I guess he didn’t know,” Staci hinted.

Her curiosity demands, as she gave Staci her attention, all of it. “Know what?”

“You and your lawyer husband live your lives and operate your business as if it’s a pencil,” Staci said.

Anna’s expression turned serious, sitting on the rim of anger. “A what life?” her shock demands.

“A pencil life. You live your life as if it’s a pencil,” Staci explained. “You have been a paralegal for years. Didn’t you learn anything from your past mistakes?”

“Girl, get to the point before I forget we are friends!” Anna threw back.

“What time did Justice Jim Milford issue his verdict?”

“Excuse me?”

“What time did the judge issue his verdict?” Staci repeats.

“Ten minutes ago,” she noted in angry furrowed brows.

“That makes it, 12:50 PM. Vincent Mars didn’t owe his dream then. The bank took possession of it at 12:45 PM. They took it all away for the same reasons you did.”

Shock paralyzed Anna, and Staci grabbed a pencil from the heap in a cup on her desk and demonstrated. “This is a pencil. They all come with an eraser. If you make a mistake, you can erase it and rewrite the correct answer in the classroom. In the classroom of Life, it isn’t that simple.”

“It should be. We should be able to erase our mistakes,” she defends.

“We can, but not in the classroom of life. Vincent doesn’t pay his bills on time because his business practices have cost him before; he, too, lives a pencil life. The bank threatens to foreclose. He had a twenty-four-hour open window. It closes at 12:45 PM, five minutes before you and your husband took it away.”

Anna gulped down her shock and pain and related, “I don’t understand.”

“The people who live a pencil life, when they erase their mistakes, also erase the life lessons they should learn from them. Then it’s repeated because they learn nothing from it. Through that action, they deny themselves the ability to make better decisions, and they find themselves in situations like you, your company, and Vincent,” Staci explained.

“Are you really saying that Vincent didn’t own his dream when this verdict was issued?”

“The bank owned it five minutes before the verdict was issued.”

“So, we really lost?”

“Anna, that’s how you live all of your life, and you found someone who lives like that too. Mistakes shouldn’t be erased. Your life isn’t a pencil. Mistakes are lessons we should learn from. When it’s erased, the life lessons we should learn are erased with it, taking away a level of freedom from us and our lives. Then humans repeat their mistakes,” Staci educates.

“What are we going to do? Our clients thought we won,” she moaned.

“Erasing your mistakes, you deny yourself a level of freedom of choice,” Staci educates, again.

“What can we do?” she asked, her eyes swaying from left to right, and her body began to tremble.

“Don’t keep erasing your mistakes. You were in such a hurry to win that you didn’t bother to do your homework, just like when we were in school, and many other areas of your life. Don’t erase this mistake. Learn from it and stop living a pencil life, giving yourself more freedom to choose the right things from lessons learned,” Staci counselled.

In tears, she relates, “I wasn’t aware that’s how I was living. You are so right. Jason is going to blame me.”

“Blame is lighter when shared. The lessons from our blunders give us the freedom that many things in life don’t. We make better decisions from that lesson.”

Many humans live a pencil life, erasing their mistakes in the classroom of life. Unaware that they are also erasing vital life lessons that would prevent them from repeating their mistakes, giving themselves more freedom to make better decisions. — Annelise Lords

Are you living a Pencil Life?

Life is my teacher. I learn from everything and everyone.

https://www.redbubble.com/people/AnneliseLords/shop?asc=u

Thank you for reading this. I hope you enjoyed it.