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 peculiar feature of 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 scrolling on social media or watching a Golden Girls marathon.
But God, the dude who invented life, also made it pretty easy to start over by giving us a remarkable gift: the sacrament of Reconciliation.
Some people fear the confessional. But if it’s a clean slate you’re after, there’s no better place to be and no easier way to get it. And it doesn’t matter how much of a mess you’ve made of things.
Few things in life are unfixable. Sure, you may have messed up yesterday in grand, spectacular fashion. Maybe you got lazy, lashed out, or said something you regret. Your life, career, or marriage may not have turned out the way you would have liked. But it doesn’t matter how embarrassed you are, how unworthy you feel, or how reprehensible your sin.
It only matters how badly you want that blank slate.
Each new day is an opportunity to start again. With a clean slate and a new optimism.
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