Wisdom Comes With a Pencil
The key to wisdom has a wooden sheath.
It’s core is formed when billion-year-old rocks, rich in carbon, are packed under unfathomable heat and pressure. If the latter isn’t around to do the work, the core can crystallise into reality as magma cools and becomes solid.
Geology is metal, but you know what isn’t?
Graphite.
Your key to wisdom is the humble pencil.
Many years ago, I put my foot down and resolved to be more serious in my reading.
Easier said than done- sure -but the first step was obvious.
‘What are all the scholarly-looking types doing? The ones with tweed jackets, pipes and #darkacademia posts?’
They write with a pencil in hand.
Or a fountain pen, for extra pomp. That's besides the point.
I hated this at first. Writing within the book felt like graffiti, no different to spray-paint on the side of the Milan Cathedral.
Today, I use a pen.
With reflection, I see how this picky mindset cost me banks of insight. Abundance I could have earned if I saw reading a little differently. But how?
Mint condition is fine for collectors.
We love to fight entropy, and win.
But for books?
Mint condition?
It’s compulsive. It’s like buying a nice whisky only for it to collect dust on the shelf.
Or, worse yet, like refusing to speak out of the fear you will tire your voice.
The desire for clean pages comes at the cost of your original mission: to seek perspective, better yourself and learn something new.
So why write? For a scrap of extra effort, you build yourself three sturdy pillars to hold up your literary exploration.
First, you turn into your own teacher.
And not a snappy lecturer, but a cool, level-headed teacher that guides you with patience. As your pencil runs along the page and scribbles down your thoughts, it forces you to think.
The opposite is a familiar story:
You start reading.
Like a car-chasing dog, full of energy and confidence, you set out on a voyage to discover something new.
Momentum lets you power through the first pages. So far, so good.
Before you know it, your eyes start to wander..
...drifting along lines…
…
…skipping over words…
Until ideas fly through one ear and land out the other. There’s nothing active about your reading anymore.
That is, until you pick up a pencil and get to work.
As you read, you write in the margins. It could be a hundred different styles of annotation, and the freedom to write as you wish is worth rejoicing over in itself.
You might jot down the big ideas, highlight punchy sentences or spot connections.
It doesn’t even have to be text: to make sense of odd concepts, I like to draw diagrams.
Bang.
You wake up and focus.
By introducing friction into the process- the pause, the stroke of the pencil and the hum of thought -you fight against passive reading and absorb the author’s words far better.
There’s no need for a teacher to guide you. It’s you now. You’re the one staying alert, navigating the maze of insights and examining the book as if your education depended on it, rather than to survive the next exam.
"I contend, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love." - Mortimer J. Adler
Second, you get real-time feedback
Richard Feynman, the namesake of our favourite learning technique, once said “If you can’t explain something to a first year student, then you haven’t really understood.”
Words are a vehicle of ideas. Once you grasp an idea, you can mould it into a hundred different sentences to get your point across.
A basic form of this rule has you rewrite a sentence in simpler terms.
I can tell you how peacocks use their plumage for sexual selection, to express their fitness to potential mates…
… or, I can tell you the men birds have sexy feathers to woo the ladies.
Same idea, different words.
It’s true in reverse: with some trickery, a final-year student can find leaked papers and memorise the answers word-to-word. Perfect marks follow, but does he understand the why behind the answers?
Nah.
In the comfort of your living room, there’s no teacher stood over your shoulder to check you have understood. It’s up to you and your pencil.
As you write, foggy thoughts become clear.
What you kinda understand turns into what you do… and what you don’t.
If you can take an idea and write it up in your own words, you get it.
And should you fail, big deal. It’s a chance to reread sections and patch up any gaps.
That's learning -the thing you and I love.
Third, you banish the curse that haunts every reader.
The ghost of mind-gaps.
The apparition of amnesia.
The phantom of phorgetfulness.
Ok enough fun.
It’s that horrible feeling. A book stirs your mind, but a day after you finish, it’s a struggle to recall the main points.
Even worse is when someone asks “Oh cool, what was it about?” and all you can spit out is clumsy generalisations.
You spent hours building your castle of wisdom, only for it to crumble.
As I’ve grown comfortable with marking up my books, my time is better respected -It’s easier to capture ideas like a magnet and arrange them among what I already know.
I throw a lot of jabs at traditional education, but here, it deserves credit -”take notes, take notes, take notes,” the lecturers tell you.
And rightfully so.
It circles back our old friend: friction.
Over two thousand years ago, when an Assyrian scribe marks his clay tablets with a story, he can etch the words in with more friction.
The result is a deeper inscription, one that resists weathering, damage and neglect.
Your ideas are the same. The more friction downstream from your books there is- notes, discussions, reviews and the like -the deeper it’s ideas are branded into your mind.
It’s why we use the phrase “to leave an impression.”
It's an act of love simple enough for an easy start, but also deep enough to practice for a lifetime.
Keep your pencils sharp and your reading fruitful.
Yours,
Odysseas
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