Making A Difference In The World Today

Sometimes it seems like I don't make a difference.  Maybe you've felt the same at some point.  Just watching the news, reading the newspaper,  or seeing things online  can be depressing with all the wars and senseless tragedies we hear about.  

But the truth is we can and do have an impact.  We may not solve all the problems in the world, but the small, seemingly insignificant actions can impact someone more than we know.

I ran across this story recently that illustrates just that.

One At A Time

A friend of ours was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he spotted another man in the distance. As he grew nearer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up, and throwing it out into the water. Time and again, he kept hurling things out into the ocean.

As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the 

man was picking up starfish that had washed upon the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water.

Our friend was puzzled. He approached the man and said, “Good evening, friend. I was wondering what you are doing.”

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

“I understand,” my friend replied. “But there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. 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 local native smiled, bent down, and picked up yet another starfish, and as he threw it back into the sea, he replied, “Made a difference to that one!”

By Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen