The Boy and the Starfish

A terrible storm had raged all night along the coast. When dawn broke, the sea had thrown thousands and thousands of starfish onto the sand, where they lay drying under the rising sun, too far from the water to crawl back.

The Boy on the Beach

An old fisherman was walking along the shore, shaking his head at the sad sight. The wind still smelled of rain, and gulls circled overhead, confused to find the beach so strangely quiet. The fisherman had seen storms before, and he knew what the morning after looked like — nets tangled, boats battered, and the sand scattered with creatures that had no business being there. He was about to turn back home when he noticed something moving far down the beach. Then he noticed a small boy walking slowly down the beach. The boy kept bending down, picking something up, and throwing it into the sea. The fisherman watched for a while, then called out, "What are you doing, son?" The boy looked up. His face was sunburned and his small hands were raw. "I'm throwing the starfish back," he said, and bent down for another one. The old man glanced down the endless beach — miles and miles of sand covered with starfish. He smiled kindly and put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "There are thousands of them. You cannot save them all. What difference can you possibly make?"

It Made a Difference to That One

The boy looked at the starfish in his hand. It was still alive, its little arms curling weakly in the air. He threw it far into the waves and watched it sink into the blue water, where it settled onto the sand and began, very slowly, to crawl toward the deeper sea. Then he turned to the old man and said, "It made a difference to that one." The fisherman stood silent for a long moment. Then he bent down, picked up a starfish, and threw it into the sea too. And soon a passing couple joined them, and then a jogger, and then more. The boy said nothing more. He simply bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it. The old man watched him for a long moment, then bent his stiff back and picked one up too. It was small and cold in his hand, and he threw it further than he expected. "To that one," he said quietly, smiling at the boy. And soon a passing couple joined them, and then a jogger, and then a whole family on holiday, and by sunset hundreds of people walked that beach, throwing starfish back one by one, and nobody was asking anymore whether it made a difference.

Moral of the Story

The size of a problem is no excuse for doing nothing about it. You may not fix the whole world, but you can change it completely for one person. Kindness does not have to be large to be real — it only has to be done.