When Pen and Paper Meet Canvas and Paintbrush

Every day, I wake up with the thought that I am not good enough, and no matter what I do, I never will be. I’m the imperfect piece of perfection that never deserved the perfectionist you were. I am the torn piece of paper that never deserved the right ink. I’m the line that smudged the whole ink throughout the sheet, leaving marks so harsh they are impossible to let go.

These pen prints set you apart. They are lines of damage that break you into pieces that can’t be put together again, yet they also shape you into a more wholesome human being. We often forget that even if objects are broken, they still leave a scar—a scar that stays for the rest of your life. The pen isn’t supposed to write only what you expect; it’s just a writing aid. What’s written can be spontaneous. Sometimes the most unexpected words create the most surprising and hurtful impacts, ones you may never have imagined.

No pen is perfect, but that’s what makes it unique. Even with less ink, it shares an affinity with the writer. We choose the pen, risking it as one of our favorites for free writing. Sometimes, overusing it makes it rough on paper and less smooth as you write. Does that mean you change the pen just because it doesn’t work as you’d like? Or do you change the refill or the ink cartridge and fix it from where it was broken?

The core competency of the pen is its ability to write, and how it writes can differ in various conditions, such as on soft or rough paper.

As a writer, you may still have a favorite pen rather than throwing it away because, after a few attempts, your writing seemed up to the mark. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get rid of things that don’t work, but no mistake or dysfunction makes life any more imperfect than it already is. We aren’t flawless, but we’re filled with flaws in the most endearing manner.

The relationship between a pen and a blank piece of paper is special, similar to the bond between an artist and their canvas. The artist has the freedom to do almost anything with the canvas, just like the independence of pen and paper. But remember, a pen is only as good as what it writes, and an artist’s brush is only as good as its strokes on a canvas.

The question is, how do you judge the picture? Is it the artist's initial inspiration to paint, what they create with the resources they have, or the depth of the colors used? Similarly, do you judge the pen by the amount of ink it has, its longevity, or what’s written on the page?

Your answer to this analogy can be different, and that’s why we are human. We’re human because of our perceptive nature. No one can say for sure that two things are the same. Our opinions differ with what we read, draw, or paint. Sometimes, you overlook the specifics of the pen because it wrote words that didn’t please your eyes, but have you noticed that the same pen helped you write your best-selling piece?

Why do we expect perfection from imperfectly perfect people?

Why, when the pen stops working, do we forget the days it was the one thing we carried alongside our journals? Does making mistakes make you any smaller?

Perhaps you'll also learn to write well with a new pen, but does that mean you throw away the old one? Would you do the same to the people around you? When they aren’t in the best situations, or let you down, do you leave them because it’s a convenient way out of a bad situation?

This is where the fault lies. For each imperfect and flawed painting on a canvas, there are at least a few truly wonderful canvases with unforgettable designs. Yet, for one reason or another, the ratio between the two is often blown out of proportion.

Hence, no matter how much good you do, in comparison with the bad, the guilt is never enough to cure the pain you caused. So never showcase your guilt because it’s only a desperate move and means nothing to the people you have harmed.

A home is made of the people you fill it with, just as people are made by what you say to them. People can be broken, sure, but any surgeon knows that what’s broken can be mended. What’s hurt can be healed. No matter how dark it gets, the sun will rise again.

Sometimes, life is like this. It’s never an objective answer; you can have multiple right answers to a question. Who’s to say that one is righter than the other? This is the problem with perfectionists. No matter what you paint on a canvas, they fail to acknowledge that it is still art and always ambiguous. Perfectionists don’t like ambiguity. They like it all clear. There is no flawless object; everything is flawlessly flawed, and that’s what we miss out on. Just because a person makes a mistake or a collection of mistakes, we fail to look at them in a mature manner.

Instead, we see them as our emotional criminal.

In the case of our canvas and paintbrush, it is the one wrong or several wrong brush strokes that ruin a certain element of the design until we throw the whole canvas away. As for the pen, it’s the excessive leakage that signals it’s time to get rid of the pen.

Do you have a favorite pen that you can’t let go of? I’m not saying you’ve got to hold onto it for the rest of your life, but aren’t those pens the ones that create a legacy? There is beauty in being flawed, too. In the chase for perfection, we forget the flawed behind. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong; you’re only human, and you’re wrong only because you were once right. You can’t always expect yourself to be on the right side of everything.

If you do, keep that pen or brush carefully, for the ones that break you can also fix you someday. We fail to see those times. In the chase for perfection, we leave all the imperfections behind as if they were nothing. Your flaws are what made you the perfectionist in the first place. Then why do we miss these out?

To my dear damaged pen and paintbrush, I wish people looked at you as objects of progress. I hope your image in the eyes of fellow painters and writers is better than how tarnished it was before. What’s broken can always be fixed unless the aid that fixes it is unwilling to do the needful.