The pencil floated freely through the seas for many days and many nights. The pencil waved with friendliness at the jellyfish which drifted alongside it. It giggled with glee at the dolphins who played a game of fetch with it. It sputtered with indignation at the enormous blue whales that blew great plumes of spray all over it. All the while filling the hours of each day with the music of the ocean gently rising and falling in its steady rhythm. Until one day the pencil caught a new note that it had not heard in a very long time: the far off crashing of waves against a sandy shore.
The rising tide carried the pencil to the shores of its new home with tumultuous violence. The pencil was dunked and bobbed from the ocean floor and back to the surface again and again. It slammed into the beach with the crash of each wave, only to be dug up again as the offending wave receded. It was pushed and pulled and tugged and torn in every direction, sometimes all of them at the same time. Until finally, with one last ferocious blast from the sea, the pencil was thrown to safety and deposited high above the shoreline in a stand of sea oats clinging desperately to the dunes of the shore.
It was here, hidden amongst the sand fleas and fiddler crabs, that the pencil first spied its new owner. He was an odd looking man in his middle years, dressed in a fine black suit from head to knees. His pant legs were rolled up to protect them from the billowing sands as he wandered barefoot between the dunes. His furrowed brow weighed heavily on his slumped shoulders as he trudged forlorn through the sand. He carried the hefty responsibility of creating justice in his world. He was troubled by a recent case where he was forced to defend a crew of trigger-happy soldiers who had murdered the members of an angry mob in the name of the law and keeping the peace. This noble Statesman decried the villainy of men who would commit such an atrocity, but clung to the laws which gave them just that same power. Yet he believed irrevocably that an empire of laws, and not of men was the only way to overrule the unpredictable passions humanity's foibles.
It was at this darkest moment that the Statesman spied the crooked pencil clinging to the sandy dune. He lifted it out of the earth, astounded by the pencil's hypnotic twisting figure. He saw the evidence of how the hands of both Man and God had sculpted the pencil into a usable shape. The pencil's core was once long and straight, but now contained a subtle yet elegant curve. Its sleek flat side was almost perfectly honed to cover a formerly hideous scar that was still barely evident at its very tip. The months at sea had bequeathed a slight twist to the once near flawlessly flat edge.
The Statesman marveled at the resiliency embodied by the little pencil. He realized that the pencil had survived all of its innumerable trials not by rigidly adhering to its creator's principals, but by bending and shaping itself to suit the needs of whatever ordeal the world presented it at that moment. Inspired by the herculean tests which his little pencil had obviously overcome, the Statesman rushed home to capture the epiphany induced by his newfound treasure.
Safely enclosed in his study, the Statesman retrieved the pencil from his coat pocket where he had safely tucked it while still on the beach. Hesitant at first to record such blasphemous ideals as compromise and reasonableness, the Statesman began to write a treatise of his thoughts on government. The Statesman gasped after each line, amazed to find himself staring more at the enlightening pencil than the page upon which it scratched its wisdom.
The pencil beamed with pride at the extraordinary prudence which it helped the just Statesman to ascribe. It never realized how much all of its experiences had imbued it with discretion and reason. Most importantly, the pencil affirmed in its heart to always share its gifts wherever it went.
The Statesman worked furiously into the night completing his treatise just as the last of the sun's rays winked out for the evening. The next morning the Statesman awoke to review his work and immediately realized the importance and impact his newly penned treatise could have upon his fledgling country. So he set to work making multiple copies of his thoughts and calling for couriers to deliver his message far and wide.
The Statesman was so enamored with the work his new little pencil had created that he vowed to pen each and every copy of his treatise with it. Happy to be of assistance, the pencil bowed gently as the Statesman began each new copy. But soon the pressure became too much for the weathered little pencil. The weight of all of its experiences built up inside it as each copy of the treatise completed. Repeating the same story over and over again pushed the pencil into a dark place where all of the sights and sounds and smells of its life seemed too a heavy burden to carry.
Finally, just as the Statesman finished his final copy, the pencil relented and broke under the pressure. The Statesman leaped back in fear at the horrifying crack which echoed out from the pencil's core. He look down at the splintered remains of the pencil in his hands with dread and pain. In its urgency to release the built up pressure, the shattered pencil had released a small cascade of shards in every direction. Several shreds of wood and lead had pierced the Statesman's hand and now small droplets of blood dripped onto his office floor.
Cursing under his breath, the Statesman reached for a small cloth to cover his wounds. In his anger and frustration with the pencil's catastrophic failure, the Statesman threw the broken pencil out the window and into a wild field beyond his home.
As the pencil fell amongst the weeds and bugs of this new wild land, it thought back over its long life and of all the wondrous new experiences it had endured. It knew that it was a very lucky pencil to have been chosen to share such commonsense wisdom with the world. And if it never got a chance to embody such reason again, then it would consider itself to have lived a long and fruitful life.
