A group of students were on a trip in the mountains. They took a long bus ride there. They camped there for a few weeks. When it was sunny, they played games together. They could do nothing if the weather was bad.

One day, an old man came up to them. “It will rain tomorrow,” he said. The next day it rained. The students were sad and they had to stay in the tent (帐棚). A week later, the old man came up to them again.

“There will be a storm tomorrow,” he said. The next day there was a storm. All the students were surprised. They thought the old man was so smart. It was helpful for them to know the weather so that they could know what to do. Then the group leader and some of his friends looked for the old man and wanted him to help predict (预测) the weather.

However, the old man didn’t show up (露面) for more than two weeks. The students felt so sad that they had to change their activities every day. They didn’t have a great time during the past few days. Finally they found the old man.

“We looked for you for a long time. Please tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow,” the group leader said.

“I don’t know,” said the old man. “My radio is broken.”

One morning, a blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held a sign said, “I am blind. Please help me.”

There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words on it. He put the sign back, so everyone who walked by could see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon, the man who changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, “Are you the one who changed my sign in the morning? What did you write?”

The man said, “I only wrote the truth, I said what you said, but in another way.”

What he wrote was, “Today is a beautiful day. But I can not see it.”

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

Of course, you think both signs simply said that the boy was blind. But the first simply told people to help by putting some money in the hat. The second sign told people that they were able to enjoy the beauty of the day, but the boy could not enjoy it because he was blind.

The first sign simply said the boy was blind, while the second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.

We can learn a lot from this simple story.

The first is: Treasure what you have. Someone else has less. Try your best to help those who need your help.

The second is: Be creative, think differently. There is always a better way.