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, 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,” 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!”There are millions of little things we can do, without taking
much effort, to make this world a better place.