 |
|
The Starfish A woman is walking on the beach early one morning, like she does every day, and she sees that during the night, thousands and thousands of starfish have washed up on the shore. Maybe even a million of them. The beach is covered, for as far as she can see as she looks down the coast into the fog. Alarmed, she begins to pick the starfish up, one by one, and throw them back into the ocean. The sun rises in the sky and gets hotter. She tries to work faster, because while the starfish can be out of water for a little while, she knows they'll die if left on the land. With the sun directly overhead, she stops and holds her hand up to shade her eyes; the beach is still a solid swath of starfish. Up on the trail not too far from the beach, a runner comes into view. She realizes this is the first person she's seen all day, and so she decides to ask for help. Before she can get the words out, the runner stops and looks at the starfish and then at the woman, "I don't know why you are bothering with that," the runner shouts to her. "There are too many! You can't save them all! There's only one of you and there are thousands and thousands of them. There's only one of you, you can't make a difference." The woman looks up at the runner on the trail. She keeps at her task while she answers, "Well, that is true; I don't think that I can save them all. Most of them are probably going to die." She turns away from the runner and toward the sea as she throws in another starfish, "But I sure did make a difference to that one."
I rescued a human today
Soon my kennel door opened and her smile was so bright that I instantly jumped into her arms. I would promise to keep her safe. I would promise to always be by her side. I would promise to do everything I could to see that radiant smile and sparkle in her eyes. I was so fortunate that she came down my corridor. So many more are out there who haven't walked the corridors. So |
