Makes A Difference

I recently read about an old man, walking the beach at dawn, who noticed a young man ahead of him picking up starfish and flinging them into the sea. Catching up with the youth, he asked what he was doing. The answer was that the stranded starfish would die if left in the morning sun. “But the beach goes on for miles and miles, and there are millions of starfish,” countered the man. “How can your effort make any difference?”

The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the waves. “It makes a difference to this one,” he said.

Hugh Duncan, Leadership