One morning an especially large fell from the leaves of a tree right into the ocean. The waves took her along with them. She tried to free herself; but in vain. She was afraid that at any minute she could be wiped out. But just then she heard a voice call out,”hurry up. come into my house; here you’ll be safe.” Blindly she followed the saving call, And before she knew what had happened, the door of the clamshell closed tight. At first the dewdrop gave a sigh of relief. But then slowly it dawned on her that she might be safe in this new house, but never free again. She would never again. be able to reflect the rainbow colors of the sunlight.
She confided her worries to the friendly lady of the house. The old clamshell told her, “If you stubbornly fight against what fate has in store for you, you’ll just find yourself suffering hopelessly and helplessly. But if you patiently accept all that fate has in store, you’ll be ease.” And then she added mysteriously, “Then you will grow stronger from within yourself. And one day you’ll be a thousand times more than when you fell off the tree.”
But the dewdrop sulked. Then she finally decided to follow this advice even though she did not understand it. She lived on silently and without complaining, completely turned in on herself as the grew inside the clamshell. She somehow felt that there was happy about it and thought, “Good luck to the times that are past; today cannot last forever; and who knows what great thing tomorrow might bring?”
One day when the clamshell had its shell opened. the dewdrop saw some white flowers floating around in the water. But they were not flower; they were the fingers of the pearl diver, which plucked the clamshell along with many others from the reef.
Soon, they were all laid out on the beach and the girl opened each of them very carefully. Suddenly she jumped up with joy, “O look at the absolutely perfect pearl that I have found! It has the shape of a dewdrop and it reflects all the colors of the rainbow. It must be worth a fortune. They all looked at the precious pearl in her hand, as it lay on top of a lotus leaf. That pearl had started out as a very shortlived dewdrop, like the thousands of others around it.
