A man was walking along a beach when in the distance he could see a small boy down on the shore line. As he got closer he could see the hundreds and thousands of starfish, washed up by an unusually strong tide, and left for dead stranded on the beach.

The man paused and watched the little boy repeatedly bending down, picking each starfish up one by one and tossing it back into the water.

The man approached the little boy and said “Young man, what are you doing?   Stop as you will tire yourself out, there are too many starfish  stranded that you can’t make a difference here.”

The young boy with tears in his eyes looked up at the older man, stooped down silently, picked up another starfish and threw it back into the ocean.

“It made a difference to that one” he said.