A little boy was seen on the beach digging a hole into the sand and with his little pail he started pouring in the water from the ocean.  A passer by asked him: “What are you trying to do?” And the boy replied: “I want to put the ocean into this little hole.”  So the bright and intelligent adult said, “How do you propose to do this?”  As if he himself knew how!  Was he testing and judging the little boy or opening himself to learning?  The little boy looked at him and said: “Sir, if I dig a hole right through the earth, only as big as you see here, the water will run out the other end and come back.” 

So the adult thought it was silly thinking.  “But aren’t the rivers forever flowing and never emptying?  Nor the oceans overflowing, though they return into the streams?  And what you cannot see,” the little boy says, “is that all that is green upon earth is fed by the water under.  And everyone wonders how it could be.  The rain is lifted up into clouds and poured again over the ground.”  Then the little boy asked: “Tell me sir,” how come there is three times more water upon earth than there is earth?  But how come the earth holds up all this water?  Isn’t it like the little hole in the ground, since you have three times more water?  So why can’t smaller hold bigger, when bigger is held by smaller?  Like the little tiny roots under at tree, just spreading out like little veins in your body.”

And the intelligent man looked at the boy because he glanced at the ocean and tried to figure out what the boy was asking and suddenly when he glanced at the boy, the boy was there no more.  Scratching his head, wondering what happened, he remembered that at one time, he was that little boy who believed that smaller could hold bigger, like the earth holding the ocean.  And he started to cry, learning the lesson from the little boy within himself; where his face had become the little container that held his tears but he was a big man and seeming to make no sense anymore.  The reality is that it takes but one person that truly believes to make it happen.  Come along.  Give me a hand and we’ll make it easier for reach other.

Thank you for reading.

Roger Poisson