Star Thrower
Making a Difference
I came across three different verions of the same story today. Some were longer and more elaborate than others, but all gave me the same feeling.
One was a poem by the famous writer Lauren Eisely.
The shortest one was tale told to children in Maine. It told of a small boy walking on the beach with his grandfather when they came across a live starfish that had been washed ashore by a storm the night before.
The boy picked it up and started to throw it back into the sea. His grandfather stopped him and asked him why he would do that. The boy said, “I throw starfish back into the sea so that they don’t die. They can’t move on the sand and if the sun comes out, they will dry out and die. So I am throwing them back so that they will live.”
His grandfather laughed at this statement and proceeded to put things in ‘perspective’ for the boy… “On this beach alone there are literally thousands of starfish? And then of course there are hundreds of beaches in the world, on which are thrown up millions of starfish in every storm. You are one kid; throwing one starfish into the sea will not make a difference”
The boy looked at the starfish in his hand, turned and threw it far into the waves and said, “It made a difference to that one!” Get it?
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 am
Yes, one at a time, we can all make a difference. We should not pass up the opportunity to do the right thing when given the chance, even if it is a little thing in this great big crazy world of ours. Those little helps add up and make a difference and hopefully it gets passed on to someone else or inspires others to do the same.
February 24th, 2011 at 8:22 am
When we start to think widely and globally about consequence of our immediate actions, we get distracted by analyzing the future and past, and our mind is diverted from here and now. This can prevent us sometime from doing the right thing. You will never see a basketball player standing on the three points line analyzing his past and future, at this critical point the only thing that occupied his mind is his ball, the net, and his hi eyes that draw an imaginary line of the ball in the air straight into the net.
Sometimes it is more important to stay focused on the time and place of right now. If you do what you feel right at the present it will affect all you surroundings and the future.