A
friend of ours was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he
began to see another man in the distance. As he drew nearer, he noticed the local native
kept leaning down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. Time and again
he kept hurling things out into the ocean.As
our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that
had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the
water.
Our friend was puzzled. He approached
the man and said, “Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing.”
“I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide
right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t
throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here.”
“I understand,” my
friend replied, “but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You
can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don’t you
realize this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast.
Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?”
The local native smiled,
bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he
replied, “I made a difference to that one!”
