“A young man walks by the side of the river and notices a bundle in the water. As he watches it float by he realises, with horror, that it’s a baby slowly sinking into the stream. He jumps into the river, swims to the screaming child and pulls it to safety onto the bank.
As he catches his breath he sees another baby floating by. Again he jumps in, swims to the bundle and rescues it. Looking back he sees two more babies in the stream but by now he is exhausted and has little energy left to do anything except call for help. Two people are walking by and hearing the cries for help jump into the water to pull these babies out.
More and more babies appear in the river. More and more people join the rescue team, each of them working until they are exhausted. Even when they have no more strength, still they jump into the river to save the growing and never ending number of babies in the river. All these people. Everyone is busy pulling babies from the river and hardly managing to rescue them all.
Will one of them abandon the task of saving babies?
Will someone go upstream and stop whoever is throwing the babies into the river?”
This is my own version of a parable I heard some years ago. I’d love to quote the original source but don’t know it .. if anyone knows then I’d enjoy hearing!
Wikipedia has an entry on this: http://www.preventconnect.org/wiki/index.php?title=River_Story
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Ian’s reply:
Carlo, I really appreciate the reference! And there’s a great explanation there too. Thanks!