Boats

A wise old man (I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's true) once told me this: that there are two ways to view the world's problems and how they should be dealt with.

Some people picture that everyone is floating around in boats.  When one boat hits an iceburg, starts leaking, or has tangled sails, another boat or two may come along to help them out.  They may even let the people over onto their boat if the damage is too great, or if the boat sinks.  Then again, sometimes boats ignore the problems of other boats because they are too busy focusing on their own problems and getting where they are going.

Then there are people who picture that everyone is in one big boat.  They know that a problem on the opposite end of the boat could probably be fixed by the people over there without any help.  Yet they choose to help anyway because they know that if the problem becomes too big, the whole boat will go down.

I choose to realize that we are all on one boat.  Everyone has the responsibility to help out those on the other end of the boat who aren't doing so well.