Why Is Green Pen Ink So Expensive?
There is a trait in society that is inspiration for sadness. It is about that tendency that we have to look at mistakes, that temptation that is to crush and torture ourselves with them, chewing them over and over again, taking the shape of a ball while they sour, like garlic that burns in the pan. We mark with a red pen, we forget the green pen …
Converting small failures, which have no importance, in the worst of murders, in the cruelest of violations, in the most absolute proof of our uselessness. We shake that whip, dexterous when it comes to causing wounds in our own flesh and in others, to later try to heal them with a clumsy hand that refuses to follow another rhythm that is intoned, in the background, in the social framework.
If there were a handbook of unhappy people, this would most likely be the feature that would appear on the cover. We are talking about the fact that many people are specialists in torturing themselves: before them and before others. Maybe at school they don’t teach us to channel our emotions so that they work in our favor, but they do use the red pen instead of the green pen. The failures weigh, the successes are taken for granted.
The green pen in childhood
Teachers demand the attention of their students for those points in which the error breathes. If you have a hard time doing math and you fail, you will likely spend the summer doing math and solving problems. On one side are English or language, in them the jump over five has been loose.
I have been a student and now I am a teacher, along the way I have come across hundreds of corrected exams in which only what was wrong could be highlighted. It could be a pristine, long, and well-reasoned exercise; However, above him stood out, like the moon in the sky, a small misspelling, an oversight when putting the units or a mistake with a sign. More for less, or less for more, it doesn’t matter.
The green pen is an attitude
Thus, it is the errors that many times, since childhood, condition the distribution we make of time. The philosophy is to narrow cracks through which water can drain. On the other side of the coin breathes a more attractive and stimulating didactics, that of insisting or highlighting achievements, the difference between before and now, the result of effort. This story, by tradition, goes in green, and not in red. Hence the red pen, and also the green pen.
Because all of us, even if we don’t correct exams, we use them. We got home, our partner has prepared dinner for us, has packed up and forgot to make the bed. What will we say after, and after and after …? What will we point out? The glass half full or half empty is not only a matter of pessimism or optimism, but the filter in our gaze, the lintel that chisels the stone or the reins that direct the chariot.
Thus, adults also use pens with other adults. The question is to know which one we use more with others… and which one we use more with ourselves. If we end the day thinking about those data that have not responded to the economic forecasts of our department or that, thanks to the exercises that we have been practicing for days, the knee pain has gone.
The red pen or the green pen talks about how we treat others and how we treat ourselves. We think that generosity is a great value, but the truth is that we do not apply it too much in this field. We admire people who motivate and comfort others, but what about what it costs us? Is green pen ink really so expensive and red pen so cheap?
Going beyond error allows us to aspire to a balance in which all colors can be combined. Acquiring a polychromatic palette to point out will make us stronger as people on our own ground and as an example for others in the social field.
