It Made a Difference to that One

The Powerful Paragraph

The starfish story, adapted from The Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley, is one of my absolute favorite anecdotes. It goes something like this: The morning after a large tropical storm, an elderly man took his daily morning walk to the ocean. As he approached the beach, he noticed the sand was littered with starfish. He estimated that thousands of starfish had washed up on shore during the storm. As he continued on his walk, he noticed a young girl in the distance. Every few feet, she would bend down, pick up a starfish, and gently throw it into the water. 

When the old man reached the young girl, he said, “Why are you throwing these starfish back into the ocean?”

The young girl replied, “When the sun comes up and the tide goes out, these starfish will die if I don’t throw them back in.”

“Well, there has to be thousands of starfish on the beach,” the old man said. “Probably more. You cannot possibly make a difference.” 

The young girl bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. “It made a difference to that one.”