Life is always in equilibrium.
Action is always balanced with reaction.
One thing happened for a reason. I still can remember vividly, some years ago, my grandpa asked me questions about a pencil. Yes, a pencil. I was thirteen. It was late afternoon, around 5pm. I was visiting his house that was in the neighborhood. His house was around five minutes walking from my house. We were sitting on sofa watching cartoon on TV. He was wearing his usual clothes at his house, pajamas. While I was excited watching cartoon on TV, he grabbed a wooden yellowish pencil that has eraser on top of it. He asked me, "Joe, what do you see from this pencil?" I felt annoyed. I looked at him in confusion. "Why in the world he is asking me this question," I asked my self. Then, he repeated the question, "What are the materials?"
“Oh, OK, it is made from wood, an eraser, and the black carbon thing,” I said. I know it was carbon because in my class, the science teacher discussed about the black carbon that we use in pencil.
"OK, what else?" he asked me again. I looked at him in a great confusion. Then suddenly he replied, "Listen Joe, you were right, it was made from wood, rubber, and a black carbon, also the yellow paint. That’s good." He said again. "But what you see is only what your eyes can see." He said.
I looked at him with a blank face, but I was listening carefully. I was wondering why he’s asking me these questions. We didn’t have a very close relationship as a grandpa-grandson like what I often see on TV. We talked once in a while, but that was it. He never played jokes on me nor treated me some ice cream.
He held the pencil near to my face and examined it very carefully as if he wanted me to observe the pencil too. "Do you know how to get this wood, rubber, and the black carbon? There are a lot of process involve in it" he said. "The wood was cut from a tree in a jungle somewhere in Kalimantan. Then, it was brought to the factory, preprocessed with some chemical to make it stronger, and then shapes it like this pencil. How about the paint, the eraser and this black carbon? There are hundreds of processes that need to be done in order to get this very pencil that I hold in my hand. Do you realize how many people involved in making this pencil? Do you know how many people that can earn money and live life just because this pencil?"
I was still confused. I know what he was saying about some process and the bla bla bla. But what I don’t understand was why he was asking me these questions? It took me years to understand what he meant.
"You have to see beyond what our eyes can see. See beyond the problem. See what’s behind to see understand what’s in front. See the past to see the future. Look at what’s below you and what’s above you." The sentences above were inspired from a movie, Patch Adam. The dialogue between "patch" and "the crazy old man" strike me like lightning. It reminded me of my grandpa. He passed away a year later after the incident. I’m hoping that I can learn some more from the story. I’ll think about it some more. May God bless you grandpa, grandma, wherever you are. I really miss you guys.
