Andre Cassagnes, the dude who invented the Etch-a-Sketch, was an electrical technician. Cassagnes came up with the idea in his garage when he peeled a translucent decal from a light switch plate and found pencil mark images transferred to the opposite face. Initially dubbed the Telecran, the toy was renamed L’Ecran Magique, or ‘The Magic Screen,’ and made its debut at a toy fair in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1959.
Funny thing about Etch-a-Sketches.
Using one is ridiculously easy. (Especially if you want to draw, you know, stairs.)
But making anything worthwhile with it is really, really hard.
Even though some people make it look easy:
The cool thing about the Etch-a-Sketch is how easy it makes it to start over. You shake it up a few times, and you’re rewarded with a blank slate.
Which makes the Etch-a-Sketch a lot like life.
Living is pretty easy, thanks to the fact that your brain, heart, and lungs put much of it on autopilot. Making your life into anything worthwhile, however, is hard. Harder than spending an hour on Facebook or watching a Golden Girls marathon.
But God, the dude who invented life, also made it pretty easy to start over.
Each new day is an opportunity to start again. With a clean slate and a new optimism.
Of course, there are exceptions, but few things in life are unfixable. Sure, you may have messed up yesterday in grand, spectacular fashion.
Your project, meeting, or soufflé may not have turned out the way you would have liked. Maybe you got lazy, lashed out, fell down, or said something you regret.
That’s ok. Today is a new day, a chance to try again.
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