It's Why Pencils Have Erasers

Half of the act of creating is mending and repairing.  In any act of art-making, mending flaws and repairing mistakes is as intimate a process as the actual making.  It is so in the world, nature is always sacrificing half its energies in the replenishing of itself, to make new trees from broken ones, in decaying flowers nourishing the soil beneath the stem. In dying as a living thing nature repairs the soil that will grow the new living thing.  But what really sent me down this trail is that this is true of relationships as well, especially those loving relationships we all hold so dear.  Mending and repairing are as important to their health as the effort we expend on developing them.  We must devote ourselves to the task of maintaining the relationships we have and maintaining mainly means mending and repairing.  It is why pencils have erasers.