Whatever You Do, Make a Differencestring(34) "Whatever You Do, Make a Difference"
Sometimes it’s easy to wonder if anything you do makes a difference in the world. When I feel like that I remind myself of this story adapted from a story by Loren Eisely:
A young man is walking along the ocean and sees a beach on which thousands and thousands of starfish have washed ashore. Further along he sees an old man, walking slowly and stooping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean.
“Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?” he asks.
“Because the sun is up and the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them further in they will die.”
“But, old man, don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it! You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.”
The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and threw it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one.”
What do you do to make a difference, even a small one? Leave your comments in the field below!