Once upon a time, there was a young boy who lived just near a beach. Every afternoon the boy would walk along the beach.
One day as he was walking, he noticed that as the tide had gone out it had left many starfish stranded on the beach. He realized that if the starfish were left there, they would die before the water returned. So as he walked along the beach, one by one he picked up the starfish and threw them back into the water. He couldn't pick them all up because there were too many, but the ones he could pick up he did.
From that day on, the boy would spend his afternoons walking along the beach throwing the starfish back into the water. Then one day as the boy was walking, an old man came walking in the other direction. The old man saw what the young boy was doing and cried out, "What are you doing, boy? You'll never make a difference. Why don't you just enjoy your walk?" The boy ignored the old man and continued to pick up the starfish, one by one, and to throw them back into the water. But as the old man got closer, he came right up to the boy and said, "What are you doing? What are you doing, boy? You'll never make a difference. Why don't you just enjoy your walk?"
The boy just stood there and said nothing. Then the old man grabbed the young boy by the arm, turned him around, and made him face down the beach. As the young boy and the old man looked down the beach, they could see that there were many, many starfish. The old man said, "Look, boy, there's hundreds of them, there's thousands of them. Look how many you have missed. You'll never make a difference. Forget about them. Just enjoy your walk."
Just then, the young boy bent down and reached into the sand one more time and picked up one more starfish. And standing up, he threw the starfish as far as he could into the ocean. Then, looking deep into the old man's eyes, he said, "I made a difference for that one."
Taken from the book The Rhythm of Life, by Matthew Kelly
