Just one?

A Man was walking down a deserted Mexican beach at sunset. As he walked
along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he drew 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 been washed up on 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," our 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, "Well, it made a
difference to that one!"

Posted by Tyler at December 25, 2003 01:53 PM