171 / 366
V. FINDING OUR CALLING AND
LEARNING THE MEANING OF LIFE
I have read that to .scrutinize the trivial
(such as an ordinary pencil) can be to discover
the monumental. We were always taught in
school that it is an art to be able to write with
great warmth (and charmth). The pencil, which
creates and reshapes ideas, may be mightier
than the pen. And that may make the pencil
more permanent. The world pencil market is
14 billion pencils a year (2 billion are made in
USA).
Nobel Economist Milton Friedman wrote a
classic example titled,
"THERE ISN'T A
SINGLE PERSON IN THE WORLD WHO CAN
MAKE A PENCIL."
It stresses cooperation,
specialization, and interdependence:
The wood from which the pencil is
made comes from
a
tree in Washington
state. To cut down that tree, it took
a
saw. To make the saw, it took steel. To
make the steel, it took iron ore. The
black center of the pencil, the
compressed graphite, comes from
mines in South America. The eraser,
a
bit of rubber, probably comes from
Malaysia, where the rubber tree isn't
even native. It was imported from
South America by businessmen. The
brass ferrule? Who knows where it
155