Once an unhappy young man came to an old master and said he was very sad and asked for a solution. The old Master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. "How does it taste?" the Master asked. "Bitter," spat the apprentice.
The Master chuckled and then asked the young man to take another handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and when the apprentice swirled his handful of salt into the lake, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake."
As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the Master asked, "How does it taste?" "Fresh and sweet!" remarked the apprentice. "Do you taste the salt?" asked the Master.
"No," said the young man. The Master sat beside this troubled young man, took his hands, and said, "The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less.
The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount we taste the depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things... Stop being a glass. Become a lake!"
For me this story holds two messages. The first is that we all experience pain in our lives. If we focus on the pain, if we concentrate it, it will feel worse. I've often heard the advice that if you are feeling a bit down and blue, one of the best things you can do is go help someone else. By shifting your focus you shift the pain. By seeing yourself as part of a larger whole you feel more alive.
The other message for me is that our pain is real, but by sharing that pain we may make it more bearable. If we put our pain into the hands of others it will be lighter, if we dilute it in the lake of our friends we can drink more easily. In the same way, by offering ourselves as part of the lake for others, we allow them to have fresh water, too.
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