A man went on vacation to the
beach. One morning as he went out on the sand he saw that there had been an unusually high
tide the night before. Thousands of starfish were washed up on the shore, and they
stretched for miles. As far as he could see in either direction, were starfish.
Suddenly he looked closer
and he saw a man near the water. And this man bent down, picked up a starfish, and threw
it out into the ocean. He kept doing it...again and again. As the vacationer watched this
man, he thought to himself, "What does he think he's doing? He'll never in a million
years get all those starfish back into the sea. The guy must be crazy."
So the vacationer walked up
to the man and asked "What are you doing?"
And the man looked at him
closely and answered, "I'm throwing stars."
"Yeah, but look at all
these starfish. There are thousands of them. How can you ever make a difference?" the
vacationer responded.
And the man bent down and
picked up a star. He looked at it for a second, then looked at the vacationer. And then he
threw the star as far out into the ocean as he could.
"It made a difference
to that one, didn't it," he said. And he bent down and picked up a second star and he
threw it too, and he said "And it made a difference to that one, huh."
And then the vacationer
caught on and he, too, bent down and picked up a star. He stood looking at it for a
moment, and then he threw it. And then another and another, and another. And he became a
starthrower.
If you had gone out on that
beach that evening as the sun was setting, you would have seen two men, side by side, back
and legs aching, shoulders sunburned, weary and tired. And still they were throwing stars.
The pain didn't matter. They were starthrowers. They had made a difference. And it was
worth it.
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