There was once a man vacationing on the coast of Mexico, One evening he decided to take a midnight stroll down the deserted beach. There was a full moon and down the beach he could make out what appeared to be a boy who would scurry around, pick something up and throw it back into the ocean.

As the man drew closer to the boy he asked what he was doing. The boy explained that with each full moon the high tide would wash the starfish so far up on the beach that they were destined to die the next day in the sun.

The man responded that there must be thousands of miles of beach and millions of stranded starfish. How much difference did this one boy hope to make? The boy pondered the question for a moment, looked back at the starfish in his hand, tossed it as hard as he could back into the life giving sea, and answered, "It made a difference to that one."