The basis of “I, Pencil” is one of the most important ideas you’re likely to ever encounter. Anyone who, encountering its premise for the first time, is not at least a little awed is probably dead inside.

I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, as a wise man observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

[I refer in my generous praise to the first two-thirds of the piece. While the bit about the mail isn’t obviously wrong, it’s much less obviously right than the part about the pencil. While I won’t here mount a strong defense of the US Postal Service, I believe one can adequately be mounted. I favor wonder and awe, not militant libertarianism in all matters.]

(via Google, The Rational Optimist, and an email I was drafting)