When I was little, I attended school in Thailand. We lived in a rural area and our school art supplies were pretty much pencils and papers. My art teacher taught us that when we use a pencil to draw a picture and if we make a mistake, we couldn’t use an eraser to erase our mistake. At the time, I didn’t understand why it was that way. All I knew was that when I made a mistake such as drawing a line that was crooked, but I wanted the line to be straight and beautiful, and every time I reached for an eraser to erase my mistake, I always thought back to the rule that my teacher taught us. At the end, I decided to add on to the picture to make it into something else according to my imagination. For example, if I’m drawing a face and draw an eye a bit too big, then I changed that to someone wearing eyeglasses. I kept doing that not knowing the true meaning or purpose why I was doing it, but it seems to work at the time. I also didn’t understand why I couldn’t use an eraser to correct my mistake, that’s what an eraser is for, why would someone invented it if I couldn’t use it for that purpose. Even though I didn’t intend to draw a person wearing glasses before, after adding on to my original mistake, I would get a beautiful picture of a person wearing glasses. It came out as good as it did because I was focused and confident that I can do a good job and not once did I have to use an eraser.

As time passed, I’m much older now, I often thought back to the lesson that I learned as a kid. I finally understood the true lesson was; the teacher was paving a foundation that is a part of me now that I never had chance to give thanks. The true lesson was to understand the nature of a mistake. It’s only human to make mistake and this happens to everyone. I’ve experienced that many, many times in my life, that I didn’t anticipate for it to happen but sadly, it did. One thing that I can do is to identify my mistake and to accept it, since I didn’t have permission to erase it; I have to try to fix it the best that I can. If I didn’t try to do that, then the mistake would be there permanently since I’m not allow to erase it. I have the ability of problem solving by doing it in a different way; I believe that when there is a will, there is a way.

If a mistake happen to any of us and we sit and cry about it, the problem will never go away. The only thing that we can do is to be more focused and fixed our mistake the best that we know how at the time. We have to continue to draw that picture with more determination. Everyone has a pencil to draw a beautiful picture of his or her life, but keep in mind that you don’t have an eraser to erase your mistake but you can add on to make your picture more complete.

I hope that we all have confident every time we draw a line. The line might be straight or curvy, if the outcome of our picture that we draw don’t come out like our imagination every time; we should be proud of what we’ve drawn. We should not be ashamed of it because at least it’s the result of our hard work, our creation. One day, we might draw a line that might not be as straight and perfect as we like it to be, but I truly believe that if we give it all we got, then the picture that we draw will be beautiful without having once to use an eraser.