I spent a year leading a group of a young people in a program of community service. Sometimes the work was easy and everyone got helped, and on those projects, morale was high. Other times, we found ourselves hopelessly discouraged. Everything we did was like a drop in the ocean. So there's a story we learned and told ourselves. It's incredibly trite, but we often found ourselves thinking "starfish, starfish" just to keep going.

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! It's littered with starfish for miles in every direction. You can’t save them all. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, “I made a difference to that one.”

The old man looked at the girl and thought about what she had done and said. Inspired, he joined the little girl in throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined, and all the starfish were saved.