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?

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under STUFF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.