The Pen

Previously I wrote about a new meditation that I have been practicing in which I stop during my normal routine for just a few seconds or a minute and focus appreciation on the first thing that comes into my field of vision. I try to do this several times a day but sometimes I forget or I get busy. I do not get mad at myself if I forget. I just start over and go from there.

Today my focus fell on my pen which was just lying on the desk in front of me. If I had not observed it and focused appreciation on it, the pen would have just remained on the desk, until it was picked up and used countless times without a thought, unthanked and unobserved. The pen holds within it the potential to write, but until I pick it up and think about what I want to write and then write, the pen is useless.

It occurred to me that the pen can be compared to our potential. We all hold within us the potential to be amazing and do great things, but without the focus and intention to use our potential, it will just lie there, accomplishing nothing. Just as the pen requires a hand to pick it up and the thoughts and intentions to create something in writing, so are we, with all our potential, useless, unless we focus and hold an intention of what we want to create with our lives. One thing cannot function without the other. No one thinks that if they focus enough intention that the pen will just get up and write by itself, but how many of us think if we just meditate or pray hard enough, the heavens will open and the world will be right, without any action on our parts.

In other words, we can't just meditate or pray hard enough and expect our mortgage or our rent to get paid without any action on our parts, such as acquiring a job to pay our bills. While I was writing my book, I thought and focused on the writing, then I submitted my manuscript to a publisher, then, in my case, I paid them to publish it. I could not have written the book without the thoughts and inspirations, the action of writing and the potential within me that was the writing itself.

In one way, we could say that the pen represents all we could accomplish in our lives. What will we do with it? Will we visualize all that it could write and never pick up the pen to write it? Will we pick up the pen with no thought to what we want to accomplish? Or will we use our thoughts, intentions, and focus to pick up the pen and create something beautiful that is uniquely ours?

What does the pen represent to you? Pick it up and use it wisely!!