I awoke early, as I often did, just before sunrise, to walk by the ocean's edge and greet the new day.
As I moved through the morning
dawn, I focused on a faint, far away motion.
I saw a youth, bending and reaching
and flailing arms, dancing on the beach, no doubt in celebration of the
perfect day soon to begin.
As
I approached, I realized that the youth was not dancing to the bay, but
rather bending to sift through the debris left by the night's tide, stopping
now and then to pick up starfish and then standing, to heave it back into
the sea.
I asked the youth the purpose of the effort. "The tide has washed the starfish onto the beach and they cannot return to the sea by themselves," the youth replied. "When the sun rises, they will die, unless I throw them back into the sea."
As the youth explained, I surveyed the vast expanse of beach, stretching in both directions beyond eyesight. Starfish littered the shore in numbers beyond calculation. The hopelessness of the youth's plan became clear to me and I countered, "But there are more starfish on this beach than you can ever save before the sun is up. Surely you cannot expect to make a difference."
The youth paused briefly to consider
my words, bent to pick up a starfish and threw it as far as possible. Turning
to me he simply said,
Those
of us who work in these fields--of medicine, counseling, social services--may
appear to have a hopeless plan. Some critics, may think we "cannot expect
to make a difference." Yet the optimism prevails, it must, otherwise you
cannot work in these fields.
We keep throwing back the starfish,
time and again, realizing that some may wash up to the shore and need to
be tossed back into the ocean again. The rewards are realized by recognizing
the individual accomplishments.
Every so often, we really do
make a difference, a life is turned around and that starfish becomes a
star. 