There was once a man who was walking down a deserted beach in a foreign country. As he slowly walked along, he saw a native of that country coming toward him. As they drew nearer, the visitor noticed that the local inhabitant would periodically stop, bend over, pick something up, and then throw it into the ocean.
As they drew closer, the visitor realized that it was a starfish he was picking up and throwing back into the water. When they were close enough to speak, the visitor asked the man what he was doing. The local inhabitant responded that when the tide went out, it left small pools of water which quickly evaporated. In each of those pools were starfish that quickly died when the water was gone. He explained that when he found such a starfish, he threw it back into the ocean.
The visitor seemed surprised, and said, “Sir, don’t you realize that, on this beach alone, there must be thousands of starfish caught like this. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are just too many, and besides, this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down the coast. With so many starfish, you can’t possibly be making a difference”. The local citizen looked at the visitor for a moment, bent down, picked up a starfish, and, throwing it into the ocean, said, “I made a difference to that one”.
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