Wednesday, April 1, 2009

the starfish story....

have you heard the starfish story?

A wise old man was on his daily walk along the beach. At a distance he noticed a little boy reaching down to pick something up and throwing it into the ocean, then tirelessly repeating it over and over again.

The old man curiously moved closer to find out what he was up to. The boy was picking up starfish left stranded by the ebbing tide, and tossing them back into the water, one by one, as if trying to save them all from dying and also from the hungry seagulls.

convinced of the futility of the task the boy had taken upon himself, the old man went up to him and said, "Son, hundreds of starfish dry up on this beach everyday. What you're doing simply won't make a difference."

Clearly hearing what the old man had said, the little boy bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it as far as he could, back into the sea. Then he looked at the old man, smiled and politely said,

"Well, it's made a difference to that one!"



the starfish story...

the starfish story...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post.

That story demonstrates the ideals of a liberal, something many Maldivians still can't grasp.

The other one which demonstrates what a liberal ideal is Obama's 2004 Democratic Convention speech in which he broadly said that anybody's problem, even if he/she is not related to Obama, is his problem because that COULD have been someone he knew under other circumstances and that making it better for him/her makes a difference for his/her life.

It is sad and shocking that many Maldivians like to generally sweep everything under the carpet, live in denial, and pretend that it is always the other person's problem.

Like take the case of the widespread drug problem the country is facing: it is easy for anyone to say "Let's shoot and kill them all cos that would solve the problem" or "Evan Naseem deserve to be killed because he was a drug addict" and so on. But these people never to stop to wonder: what if those addicts were their sons? What if? What if?

I guess some people have lost humanity that they don't have any human emotions or feelings of empathy left in them. All that is left is a stone cold outer shell.

f i Я a s said...

thanks for that... but i don't think it's liberal at all... it's a rather conservative point of view... in fact, the modern liberal is more concerned about individual liberties than anything else...

Shaari said...

inspirational story. how could it ever be futile to lend a hand...

Vaaf said...

Take a hint from this wise story Maldivians, take uo the causes that our society is plagued by today. even as a single entity.

Chia said...

I have heard the story and was inspired by it. Apparently it's impossible to change the whole world but as an individual there is so much we can do to make a difference in the lives of people around us.