One day, an abbot pulled a brother who was having some difficulty aside. He said to him, "Look, Brother, I know you are having a hard time right now. I need you to do what I tell you." The brother agreed. So the abbot told him to take a cup of salt and pour it in a glass of water. "Now taste it," he told him. The brother did. "How does it taste?" "It's bitter." Now, the abbot took the brother to a great lake that was near the abbey and instructed the brother to pour a cup of salt into the lake. "Now taste it," he told him. The brother did. "How does it taste?" "It's pure and fresh and clean." The abbot looked him in the eyes and said, "The bitterness you taste is relative to the size of your perspective. When you are small, the same amount of salt can make you bitter. Expand your perspective. When you begin to see things in universal terms, the salt cannot make you bitter. Stop being a glass. Be a lake."