THE SALT DOLL THAT SHOWED ME THE WAY

This story is really dear to me.
When I was about 21 years old and active in the scouting organization, I came across this story. I was searching for something that reflected how I felt at the time. It was, in fact, time to face what—within the scouting tradition—is a kind of rite of passage into adulthood.
After this ceremony, you can choose what path to take as an adult: becoming a scout leader or pursuing something else entirely. But from that moment on, you are considered an adult—empowered and responsible.

THE SALT DOLL, Antony De Mello

A doll of salt, after a long pilgrimage on dry land,
came to the sea and discovered something she had never seen and could not possibly understand.  
She stood on the firm ground, a solid little doll of salt,
and saw there was another ground that was mobile, insecure, noisy, strange and unknown.  
She asked the sea, 
“But what are you?” 
and it said, 
“I am the sea.”  
And the doll said, 
“What is the sea?” 
to which the answer was, “It is me.”  

Then the doll said, 
“I cannot understand, but I want to; how can I?”  
The sea answered, “Touch me.”  
So the doll shyly put forward a foot and touched the water and she got a strange impression that it was something that began to be knowable.  
She withdrew her leg, looked and saw that her toes had gone, and she was afraid and said, 
“Oh, but where is my toe, what have you done to me?”  
And the sea said, “You have given something in order to understand.”  
Gradually the water took away small bits of the doll’s salt and the doll went farther and farther into the sea and at every moment she had a sense of understanding more and more, and yet of not being able to say what the sea was.  
As she went deeper, she melted more and more, repeating: 
“But what is the sea?”  
At last a wave dissolved the rest of her and the doll said: “It is I!”