I was gifted a fountain pen from an old friend of mine a few years ago. Reading this article has me pulling it out and considering using it for the first time.

I’m not an expert on how the brain works, but I can say that, when writing by hand, one is continually solving a series of small problems having to do with the spacing of words, how letters are connected, the crossing of the letter t (sometimes more than one in the same word) and the dotting of the letters i and j, and how to accomplish all of those things through coordinated movements not just of the fingers but of the whole arm. All of that has to be integrated in real time with whatever is happening on a more abstract level in the brain’s processing of ideas and imagery.

Going back to that fictional conversation in The Diamond Age, I think that the answer—the thing that Finkle-McGraw acquired during his upbringing, that he failed to confer on his children, and that he wants to give his granddaughter—isn’t simply a body of knowledge to be memorized or a set of skills to be mastered. It’s a stance. A stance from which to address the world and all its challenges. A stance built on self-confidence and resilience: the conviction that one has a fighting chance to overcome or circumvent whatever obstacles the world throws in one’s path. The way you acquire it is by trying, and sometimes failing, to do difficult things. It can be discouraging, but if you have good mentors, and if you’re collaborating with friends who are in the same boat, you can find ways to succeed, and develop a knack for it. That’s true self-reliance.