The Writer and the Starfish

There was a writer who went out early every morning and walked the beach before retiring to a small cottage to spend the rest of the day working on manuscripts.

One morning as he was walking along, his bare feet in the sand, he looked down the beach.  In the distance he could see someone dancing along the water's edge with a beautiful, rhythmic movement. But as he got closer, he realized the person was not dancing.  He could see that she was stooping to pick something up and then turning, running and tossing the object into the waves.  As he approached her, the man saw that she was picking up starfish on the beach and throwing then into the sea.

She stopped for a moment as the writer ask her,  "What are you doing?"

"The tide is going out, and these star fish stranded on the beach will die unless I cast them back into the sea, " she responded.

"But there are miles of beach and thousands of starfish," the man said,  "you can't possibly make a difference."

Without responding, she bent over, picked up another starfish and hurled it into the ocean.

"I makes a difference to that one," she said.

The man stood silently for a moment, then bent down, picked up a starfish, and joined the woman in her task.

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