Yesterday was the first day of my college, and I was both excited and nervous. Something interesting happened that day — our English teacher gave us a challenge. We were told to write freely for five minutes without stopping our pens, with no concern for spelling or grammar mistakes. The idea was to let our thoughts flow, a free writing exercise.

So, during that time, I wrote:

“Sir just told me to write something, anything, that comes into my mind, and that too without stopping. The time is very short because I cannot write my whole thought process in just five minutes. But the first thought that came to my mind was an image of a blue pen lying on a table in an empty room. There was…”

“Time’s up!” I heard.

A very ordinary piece of writing, right? Isn’t it?

Next, our teacher asked us to pick the most meaningful or sublime sentence from what we had written. My paragraph didn’t seem to have anything special, so I was unsure which line to choose.

In the end, I picked: “A blue pen lying on a table in an empty room.”

Then I noticed what others had chosen: “Life is not just about lying, but truth.” “The waves of the sea are seen by the eyes of my heart.”

I felt a bit embarrassed about mine.

But the task wasn’t over yet. Our teacher gave us a home assignment to write a whole page on the line we had selected.

The next morning, I presented my article in front of my classmates. Each one of us tried our best.

Here’s what I wrote:

“There was nothing, but a pen. The scene felt like space, vast and minimalistic, like a dot on a white A4 paper. It represented the value of a pen in this world. This pen alone tells a million stories, the journey of invention and development through generations. Today, we are distant from our social life, just like that pen, forgotten on the table. The generation of clicks has moved away from the pen. For them, it’s just an object that writes.

Because the pen is rarely used now, its ink dries; just like the blood in our veins when we lose our purity as humans. The pen belongs to a lineage that is loyal and steadfast. It never abandoned us; it served humanity faithfully.

Maybe I could write much more about that scene, but I’ll end it here. The truth is, we humans are never fully content. We always want a little more — more time, more love, more chances — to do things differently. Just like I wished for five more minutes to finish my writing, we often wish for five more minutes in life itself.

Perhaps that’s what makes us human, this endless longing to create, to feel and to hold on to the moments that slip away too soon.”

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 22nd, 2025