Origin: Unknown

Theme: A Tale for Earth Day

Students in a high school class who had been discussing environmental challenges said to their teacher, “It’s such a worldwide problem, what can we do about it?”  In response their teacher told them this old tale:

Once there was a wise old man. He was so wise he could answer any question anyone ever asked him, no matter how difficult.

One day, two young people were talking and they said, “We’re going to fool that old man. We’ll catch a bird, and go to the old man, and say, ‘This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?’ If he says ‘Dead,’ we’ll turn it loose and let it fly, and if he says, ‘Alive,’ we’ll crush it.”

So they caught a bird, and they carried it to that old man, and they said, “This that we hold in our hands today, is it alive or is it dead?”

The wise old man looked at those young people.  He smiled and he said, “It’s in your hands.” “As in the tale,” the teacher said, “The future of the environment is in your hands.”