What Can I Do?

Mark came back from school very sad. His mother looked at him and said:
‘You look very sad. It seems that you had a rough day. What happened?’ “Today, in science, the teacher was talking about Earth Day and the environment. Earth Day is a day when every person promises to do something to protect our world from pollution. Mrs. Green was telling us that many companies do not do their best in order to get rid of their industrial waste. She said that our world is getting dirtier and that many animals and plants are becoming extinct. She wants us to think of something we can do to help. On the way home, I thought that there is nothing I can do. I can’t stop the companies from polluting our air and dumping toxic waste in the sea and I can’t save all of the animals! There is not anything that I can do to make a difference.”
Mark’s mother sat for a minute, thinking.
“Let me tell you a story that your grandfather told me. I don’t know where he heard it, but I think that it might help you think about the problem in a different way.”
She began:
“One morning a man was walking down a beach covered with dying starfish. The night before the tide had been especially strong and had washed up thousands of starfish on shore. The man was sorry that all the starfish would die on the beach. He came upon a boy who was throwing starfish back into the ocean as fast as he could. The boy was out of breath and it was obvious that he had done a lot of work as he looked tired.
“Son,” the man said, “you might as well quit. There are thousands of them. There is no way you can make any sort of a difference.” The boy did not even stop in what he was doing. He kept bending and throwing but as he did, he spoke to the man: “I can make a difference to this one, and this one, and this one.”
And the man knew the boy was right. He began to help return the animals to their home, and kept thinking that sometimes little children can teach elderly people real lessons in life.
Mark stared at his mother.
“But he did make a difference, didn’t he? To every starfish that he threw back in?”
His mother nodded, smiling. He sat for a moment, thinking about what his mother had said.
“So, what it means is that even though I can’t change everything, I can make a big difference by doing the little things that matter?”