Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Making a Difference

Sometimes we come up with a brilliant and noble idea but when it comes to the execution part, which unfortunately is the most difficult part, we start thinking that we as individuals would not carry a say or for that sake, it doesn’t make any difference to others because that act may not be big enough to come into view. But in the larger sense, it is.

A beautiful story to keep up our momento intact, in doing good all the time, howsoever small the magnitude of the action may appear to be as it does a invaluable difference in the long run---to someone else.

My friend was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see 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 my friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had washed up on the beach, and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. My 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 its 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!”

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