One of my friends was walking down a beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another person in the distance. As he came nearer, he noticed that a local boy kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it into the water. Time and time again he kept throwing things into the ocean.

As my friend came even closer, he noticed that the boy was picking up a starfish that had been washed up on the beach. One at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. My friend was puzzled. He walked closet to the boy and said, “Good evening, friend. I want to know what you are doing.”

“I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. It’s low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die.”

“I understand.” my friend replied. “But there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t throw all of them back into the sea. There are too many. And don’t you realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches? Can’t you see that you can’t make a difference?”

The boy smiled, bent down and picked up yet another starfish. He threw it back into the sea and replied, “Make a difference to that one?”

Do you know of anyone who uses the truth to deceive（欺骗）? When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can give you a false picture.

For example. someone might say, “I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery. It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!”

This guy’s a winner, right? Maybe, maybe not. We then discovered that he bought $200 worth of tickets, and only one was a winner. He’s really a big loser!

He didn’t say anything that was false, but he left out important information on purpose（目的）. That’s called a half-truth. Half-truths are not technically（技术的）lies, but they are just as dishonest.

Some politicians often use this trick. Let’s say that during Governor Smith’s last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she seeks（寻找）another term. One of her opponents（对手）says, “During Governor Smith’s term, the state lost on million jobs!” That’s true. However, an honest statement would have been “During Governor Smith’s term, the state had a net gain of two million jobs.”

Advertisers will sometimes use half-truths. It’s against the law to make false statements so they try to mislead you with the truth. An advertisement might say, “Nine out of ten doctors advised their patients to take Yucky Pills to cure toothache.” It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Company.

The kind of deception happens too often. It’s a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.

A group of old classmates, they succeeded in their work and got together to visit their teacher. Their conversation soon turned to complaining (抱怨) about the stress (压力) in their work and life. The teacher went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and many cups. Some of the cups are expensive and lovely, but some are cheap and not beautiful. The teacher told them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the teacher said “Have you noticed all the nice-looking expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the cheap ones? It’s OK for you to want only the best for yourselves, but that is why you have the stress in your work and life even if you are very successful now.

“All of you really wanted the coffee, not the cups, but you chose the best cups and were eyeing each other’s cups.”

“Now think about this, life is the coffee, and money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold life. They do not change the quality (质量) of life. Sometimes, we just care about the cups, and we fail to enjoy the coffee. So, don’t let the cups drive you, enjoy the coffee instead.”