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!"