An elderly author lived in a beach house on the West coast and
had taken to enjoying a pre-breakfast early morning walk along the beach, to
avoid people and also to clear his mind before settling in to his writing
for the day.
As he approached the sea he saw that the previous evenings heavy storm had
caused a huge band of debris (seaweed and flotsam & jetsam) to have been
laid at the high water mark. As he neared the debris he saw that within the
seaweed were many thousands of starfish, some already dead but many others
making the hopelessly long journey back to the safety of the sea.
Lifting his eyes and looking down the beach he realised that this scene was
repeated all the way down the band of debris as far as he could see, "there
must be hundreds of thousands of starfish struggling or dead here" he
thought. He realised he was looking at the raw power of nature and was
witnessing a natural extinction event. For several seconds he pondered the
loss of life and the struggle for life that was going on in front of him and
he bemoaned his inability to affect the obvious outcome. And with this he
continued his walk.
Some twenty minutes walking time later he noticed a
figure moving gracefully through the mist generated by the still crashing
waves. His curiosity now aroused, he decided to walk further along to see
what this strange dance might be. As he got closer he saw that the person
was moving steadily and rhythmically between the debris band on the beach
and the sea. He picked up his pace, sure that the dance or exercise would be
over before he could see better what was happening, but also hopeful that he
would see what was going on.
As he got closer he could see what was happening. A young man was running up
and down picking up
handfuls of starfish and throwing them back into the safety of the sea.
Feeling sad he approached the young man and said "hello son, listen I've
walked a long way down this beach and there's dead starfish all the way down
it, you cannot save them all, save your energy for something really useful".
The young man continued his task of collecting handfuls of starfish and
throwing them into the sea without responding. After a few minutes the
author now becoming frustrated said "please give up, you're wasting your
time, you are not making a difference here, nature does these things, its
her way".
Now the young man stopped in front of him his hands full of starfish, he
took one and threw it into the sea and said "I made a difference to that
one" and as he threw another one "and that one, and that one and that one
and that one". When all the starfish in his hands were back in the sea, he
ran back up the beach scooped up handfuls more and continued on with his task.
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