The Star Thrower

A young person is walking along a beach and sees an old man who is throwing back into the sea starfish that have been left stranded after the tide went out. “There are so many of them,” says the youngster. “What possible difference can you make?” The old man looks at the starfish in his hand and throws it to safety into the sea, saying, “It makes a difference to that one.”

This is a modern parable that I have used in my own endeavours and have told on numerous civic occasions over the years, particularly when addressing audiences with a predominance of young people. For elaborations on this theme see Loren Eiseley’s book ‘The Star Thrower’. But the principle has great value to people of any age – hence the central role of the old man in this inspiring little story. We hear it said so frequently these days (and not just by youngsters) that: “I want to be a success and do something that will change the world forever”. Nothing less than that, apparently, will be good enough!

I suppose it is true that the world does change forever even if all you do is change the position of a single molecule – but I don’t think that is what is meant! But what may seem to be small service is true service nonetheless, and is of the kind that is most often possible for ordinary people, and it certainly does make a difference as the star thrower explained. This is so even without the ‘butterfly effect’ (where, in complex systems, a very small change, such as the legendary butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon, can have enormous unforeseen ramifications - such as a subsequent tropical storm in the Atlantic).

The late President Kennedy once said that everyone can make a difference and should try to do so. And he did mean everyone - young or old, rich or poor, male or female and from all communities and all parts of the world. And the scientist Jane Goodall said – at an occasion here in Birmingham as it happens – “Every individual can make a difference every day by recognising personal responsibility and the ability to affect beneficial change through our conduct as consumers, through lifestyle change, through being active and engaged.” I wholeheartedly agree with this. There is a tendency to underestimate the importance of what we do in our everyday lives. Making a difference isn’t just for big picture situations or the big shots in this life.

In fact what matters most in solving many of the problems that we are facing in our society today is what individual people do in their personal and work relationships and in their own communities. This means putting service, however small it may seem, before self, at least some of the time, and remembering the metaphor that a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle.

You may think that what you do as one person would only amount to a drop of rain in a vast ocean. Even if this was so, remember that there are over seven billion other people in the world – the effect of individual contributions will be cumulative and I believe that it is multiplicative. Taken together they are more important than ‘big deal’ projects and promises, often not delivered, and the individual works are helping to make the world a better place. And on this theme of scale and significance we should also remember that if it were not for the drops there would be no ocean.

And getting back to ‘being a success’, a far better concept of ‘success’ is that this is achieved in doing not what others in an audience or peer group consider to be great, but what you consider to be right. And, very importantly, don’t let what you think you cannot do interfere with what you know you can do.

There can’t be many people who have never made the slightest difference to anyone else’s life. In fact we can all make a difference for the better. Change one person’s life a little by a kind word, a helping hand, an understanding ear or a tolerant act and you could change the course of a life and can help, in this small way, to change for the better, the part of the world in which you live.

While it is probable that the person you influence in this way is someone much like yourself, they may perhaps be a future Beethoven or Marie Curie. And it’s also worth remembering what the industrialist Henry Ford is reported to have said: ‘Whether you think you can or you can’t - you are right’.

We hear much talk of the need for leadership these days – a great deal too much in my view – usually coming from those who see themselves as the sort of people entitled to take such a role. But it is not always remembered that leadership assumes its authority from the people who have consented, or not, to be led and the worst leadership, often surrounded by a cabal, forgets this altogether.

In my opinion stewardship is a much more important function. And this is something that each one of us can do every day, just as President Kennedy and Jane Goodall said. Stewardship can mean hanging on to the values that we were brought up with: ‘Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set’ looking out for each other, taking care of our local environment and being mindful of global issues, helping at a food bank or safeguarding charitable and cultural institutions.

And we should be, as far as possible, the masters of our own fates. Upbringing is not destiny and we are not slaves to fortune. So we can all give a personal meaning to another quote from the Old Testament: ‘Better is the end of things than the beginning’ and we can all be star throwers in our own lives and in our own ways if we choose to be so.