Make A Difference

Sent July 7, 2007

A man was walking down the beach at sunset. As he walked along, he saw another man in the distance. He noticed this man kept leaning down, picking up  something and throwing it out into the water, again and again. As he approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach. He was throwing them back into the water, one by one.

Puzzled, he approached the man and said, "Good Evening. I was wondering what you are doing."

"I'm throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it's low tide and all these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don't throw them back into the ocean, they'll die up here from lack of oxygen."

"But, there must be thousands of starfish on this  beach. You can't possible get to all of them. 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 man bent down and picked up yet another starfish, and threw it back into the ocean. With a smile he  replied, "Made a difference to that one!!!"