One Starfish at a Time!

A friend of mine was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked

along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed

that 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 my friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up

starfish that had washed up on the beach, and, one at a time, he was throwing

them back into the water.

My 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 from lack of oxygen."

"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, "Made a difference to that

one!"

There are millions of little things we can do, without taking much effort,

to make this world a better place.

– Author Unknown