Here’s an inspirational story that I first heard from my favourite teacher, Fr. Gatti... A visitor to a beach noticed that the waves brought along hundreds of starfish. However, when the waves ebbed, they left behind many starfish to die. The man decided to save the starfish. He would pick them one by one and throw them in the water.
A passerby observed the starfish saviour with amusement, ‘There are hundreds of starfish. How many can you help? What difference does it make?’ This kind-hearted man immediately responded, ‘It makes a difference to this one.’ And he threw yet another starfish back to the safety of the sea.
We need to ask ourselves: what difference are we making? Big or small, does not really matter. Surely, if everyone made a small difference, we would be responsible for a big difference. Importantly, for the one who is impacted positively by our initiative, we will have made the difference. And for ourselves we will have made the difference of moving to being part of the solution rather than being audience to a predicament.
Those who initiate efforts, only if results of great magnitude are assured, can never really make a difference. Ayn Rand has said it so well, ‘Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.’ To make a difference, we must be better at taking initiative, without getting trapped in gauging the scale of impact.
In every situation, let’s BE BETTER at making a difference
... by distancing our actions from the success reference!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
PRAVIN SABNIS conducts UNLEARNING UNLIMITED outbound workshops. MONDAY MUSE is based on JCI-India’s National President’s theme: Touch To Transform (2004), We Are The Future (2005), Speak Through Action (2006), Develop New Dimensions (2007) & the JCI theme – BE BETTER (2008 onwards).
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