Once upon a time there was a shell. She was at the bottom of the sea cradled by the waves, touched by the sinuous passage of colorful fish and seahorses until a storm reached her, disrupting her life. The violence of the waves overturned her over and over again, making her spin, roll, bump, carrying her far away until she, bruised and sore, stopped. She was trying to understand where she had ended up when, suddenly, a piercing pain shot through her. What else was happening? Ah here! Through her valves, in the previous distortion, he had managed to sneak a pebble which, although small, had angular and pointed contours. It really hurt on living flesh... The shell tried to move and "spit" it out, but to no avail. She tried and tried again in the following days. The pain didn't go away. She cried, and slowly her tears covered the pebble. Strange, the pain was starting to ease. She still tried to eliminate it but it was now part of her.

Among the meshes of the net, together with the fish, a fisherman saw a shell. He opened it and, to his surprise, found a beautiful, shiny pearl in his rough and calloused hands. He turned it over and over: perfect!

Fishermen know that every pearl has a story to tell and... he held it to his ear.

As he listened, he thought back to his life. How many storms she had gone through, how many solitudes, how much pain and anger and rebellion... How many tears had mixed with the drops of the sea! But those very tears had managed to work the miracle inside him too. A pearl fruit of pain, of renunciation, of patience, of that "pebble" that gets inside you and you can no longer throw out; a pearl capable of giving light to those who approach...

The fisherman looked at that miracle enclosed in his hand, looked at its light, raised his face to the clear sky and, clearly, smiled.