A concerned father was worried that his son was wasting his youth. He took him for a walk.
It was a bright, windless day, and they came upon a lake. “Look how the entire landscape—the sky, the sun, and the mountains—is reflected in the water,” he said. Then he dipped his hand into the lake and flicked his fingers toward the ground.
He encouraged his son to look closely at one of the drops of water that had landed on the earth. In that one drop, the entire reflection of the same landscape was visible.
“The same is true with time,” said the father. “One minute has all the properties of your entire life. It is a microcosm of your entire day, just as one day is a microcosm of your life. And so you should treat each minute accordingly.”