Beaches

Beaches

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 —…