ONE section of a bookshop that always beckoned to me seductively, was where they displayed stationary. It wasn’t books by famous authors that had me enthralled, or shelves that contained classics by writers of yore, nor crime or fiction, but empty pads of white paper that came in all shapes and sizes.
And I would leave the bookshop, with a notepad or notebook tucked firmly under my arm. But it wasn’t long before those sheets of paper were filled with my horrible handwriting, or doodles, or scrawls, or ink stains that turned those pure white sheets into blackened monsters! I thought of same poor sheets as I read Kahlil Gibran’s, ‘Said A Sheet of Snow-white Paper’, “Pure was I created and pure I will remain forever. I would rather be burnt and turned to white ashes than suffer darkness to touch me or the unclean to come near me.”
The ink-bottle heard what the paper was saying, and it laughed in its dark heart, but it never dared to approach her. And the multicoloured pencils heard her also, and they too never came near her. And the snow white sheet of paper did remain pure and chaste for ever-pure and chaste- and EMPTY!’
After I read these profound lines I thought of those piles of white stationary in the bookshops. Were they all crying the same. Were they also looking at pens and coloured pencils and shuddering? At ink bottles, and trembling with not just fright but disgust?
If all white sheets of paper had been left as they were, there would never have been a Shakespeare or a Bible, no recorded words of wisdom, or any great works for us. It was ink that darkened the paper, the pen that scratched its pure surface that brought great works to light. But, how many of us are like those white sheets of paper lying in bookstores? How many who will not take the risk of allowing the pen of opportunities, write lines on them? Who say, “Let me remain safe and secure, white and wholesome!”
In my book DARE, I spoke of a sentence that changed my life, it was, “Tiptoeing through life to finally face death!” Are you, a white sheet of paper, fearful, timid, fainthearted and apprehensive, not daring to allow life to write lines of experience, episodes and events that could make you a book for others to read and learn?
The inkbottle of opportunity, the pen and pencil of adventure wait patiently for you to stop your tiptoeing and put ink to white pages! And as your white pages get written on, you’ll hear a Divine Voice whispering, “Are you willing to let Me write on your pages too?”
