Once I heard a story about a little boy playing on a beach — I’m not sure whether it was truth or fiction. The story made no mention of what beach it was, or where, or when. As I think about it now, it might have been any beach at any time. Certainly there are plenty of beaches kids play on, and have for pretty much as long as there have been kids (the beaches were always there.) Anyway, a storm had passed through and there were hundreds or thousands of starfish washed up on the shore. Many were flipped over on their backs, half maybe, and though I don’t know much about starfish I’m guessing that even if right side up they had almost no chance of ever making it back into the water. So here is this kid throwing them back in, one or perhaps two at a time, and someone (no doubt an adult) walks up to him. Who promptly surveys the situation, looks all up and down the beach at the endless array of starfish in various states of drying up or getting plucked by seagulls, then looks down at the kid and asks him what he’s doing. I’m sure the boy was nice enough to respond though I don’t remember what he said — something simple like, “I’m throwing them back in the water” sounds right. To which the older person laughed and said, “you’ll never do them all, what does it matter?” And the boy’s response: “It mattered to that one.”
I think it is a fairly well known tale, but even so I wonder how many people actually thought about it very much. What beach was it? Who was the kid? What about the starfish? How do these things relate to me, if at all? I know when I first heard it I thought, “good for you kid, don’t give up just because you have someone standing there sneering at your efforts.” But then somewhere between wondering whether it was truth or fiction, between getting annoyed at the guy who came up to unjustifiably (in my opinion) mock the efforts of a kid who had his heart set on something and cheering the kid on for trying what seems like an impossible task, I never got around to thinking about it too much further. Perhaps I attribute that in part to the distractions of the everyday. How often do we actually have ten minutes to sit down and reflect on something like that? For me it has been at least a few years since I first heard that story and I only come around to it now because it’s late, no one is awake, and I don’t feel like sleeping. Perhaps I should turn on the TV, listen to some music, or read a book. But then why would I give myself more things to think about when I have this particular item to mull over, which I still believe was aptly put — though I still don’t know whether it was true or not? This will work for now. I’ll think about this.
I think the kid could be anyone. I think the starfish could also be anyone. And unfortunately I think the guy is just about everyone. I suppose I’ve figured out at this point that it probably was a fictional story, thinking all the while that it very easily might not be, and wishing if it were that I had the good fortune of meeting the person who could think something like that up. Supposing that if it really did happen it was the sort of thing that happens to encourage us to think a little bit more — an enticement perhaps to stay awake a few minutes longer, block out one or two more of the distractions, or perhaps even keep the TV off. An enticement that won’t be successful for everyone, but which mattered to at least one starfish, which is me, sitting at my desk typing away as my mind wanders around trying to figure out just how many beaches that could have been.
Our minds often take refuge in repetition. We set up our routines and we go to our jobs and we organize our refrigerators. Always the same. We’ve figured out the way things must be done, and yet we go to a friend’s house and things are just a bit different. With similarities, but something is different. The silverware drawer is where it ‘should be’ but look, she’s got the forks and spoons switched around. Sometimes we ‘get used to it’ in a different place, and other times we long for home. We try new foods once or perhaps twice a month, more often fearing our own judgment, or perhaps not understanding how unlikely it is that the foods we eat everyday would be the same if we chanced to try even a few of the hundreds or thousands out there still left for us to try — many of which we would no doubt like better or which would be more healthy for us. We do these same things over and over in so many places in our lives. And this is the way we die. A difference of severity only. Hopefully after years of this which we call life, we sit fortunate enough to exchange goodbyes with loved ones on deathbeds picking the color of our draperies in a hospital ward, or selecting a, b, or c on a yellowing menu with the lamination peeling apart in the corners. Pick the beach, they are everywhere.
I walked into the grocery store the other day. I wandered around for a while, picked a few things up, and eventually found my way to the checkout. There was a woman standing there, spending her time, working her job. I don’t know what sort of day she’d had — good, fair, poor. I cannot judge; I am not her and I don’t follow her everywhere she goes in the day as some sort of life critic. But as I thought about the starfish my mind wandered back to the grocery store and I was thinking she might have been having a not-so-good day, or perhaps one that she wouldn’t even remember once it was gone — that very worst sort of day which when strung together with too many like it makes us pause in reflection much later and ask “where did my life go?” Might she have arrived at work after rushing through traffic, punched her card, adjusted her hair, and taken up her position only to work through 8 hours of an unending stream of people who simply wanted to get out the door as fast as they could because they had better things to do than to stand in line at a checkout? And when I thought about that I was glad that I stopped to say something to her. Not for any of the typical reasons, not even because we had anything in common, aside from standing at a particular checkout at a particular time on a particular day. Maybe now I see that she was a starfish just like everyone else. And though I’m quite sure I didn’t throw her in the water, I have an idea that I might have at least nudged her a little further in that direction. Say “what does it matter” and please be prepared to hear me respond, “well it mattered to her.” I could tell, just as much as the kid on the beach flinging starfish over his shoulder could tell each time he heard one plop into the water behind him.
In the end, for me, the beaches we all lie about are simply the sameness in our lives. Causing us to wither up or be plucked away never moving or experiencing anymore. And so we should not care. Not at least for the sneering of others when we stop to genuinely ask how someone is doing and wait long enough to hear their response. Or when we hold the door open for someone regardless of age or gender, despite that they were just out of range of the entrance or exit to make it maximally convenient for us to do so. We should not care for the opinions of those apparently so much wiser than we, who would rather have each of us watch the other drying up on a beach here, there, everywhere, than to make our efforts to nudge one another in the direction of the water by breaking up the monotony that becomes our lives. We should go about our business, and realize what our jobs really are. Our real jobs. Not the thing we collect our paychecks for. Our jobs which are most importantly to figure out how we should spend our time. Shall we do it swimming around in the vast stretches of ocean that could be our experiences, or drying up on the 1% or less of the world that is beach? How do we get to either place?
