Early one morning, an elderly man was walking along the beach when he noticed that the tide had washed thousands of starfish onto the shore. As he continued down the beach, he saw a young boy picking up the stranded starfish one by one and tossing them back into the ocean.

Curious, the old man approached the boy and asked, “Why are you spending so much time doing that? There are so many starfish on this beach.”

The boy picked up another starfish and gently threw it into the water. “Because if they stay here in the sun,” he replied, “they’ll die.”

The old man looked down the coastline, stretching as far as the eye could see, covered with starfish.

“But there are thousands of them,” he said. “You can’t possibly save them all. What difference can a few make?”

The boy paused, bent down, and picked up another starfish. He tossed it into the ocean, then turned to the old man with a smile.

“It made a difference to that one.”

For a moment, the old man stood silently. Then he leaned down, picked up a starfish of his own, and threw it back into the sea. Together, they continued helping one starfish at a time.