The Starfish Story

          I awoke early, as I often did, just before sunrise to walk by the ocean's edge and greet the new day. As I moved through the misty dawn, I focused on a faint, far away motion. I saw a youth, bending and reaching and flailing arms, dancing on the beach, no doubt in celebration of the perfect day soon to begin. As I approached, I sadly realized that the youth was not dancing to the bay, but rather bending to sift through the debris left by the night's tide, stopping now and then to pick up a starfish and then standing, to heave it back into the sea. I asked the youth the purpose of the effort. "The tide has washed the starfish onto the beach and they cannot return to the sea by themselves," the youth replied. "When the sun rises, they will die, unless I throw them back to the sea." As the youth explained, I surveyed the vast expanse of beach, strectching in both directions beyond my sight. Starfish littered the shore in numbers beyond calculation. The hopelessness of the youth's plan became clear to me and I countered, "But there are more starfish on this beach than you can ever save before the sun is up. Surely you cannot expect to make a difference." The youth paused briefly to consider my words, bent to pick up a starfish and threw it as far as possible. Turning to me he simply said, "I made a difference to that one." I left the boy and went home, deep in thought of what the boy had said. I returned to the beach and spent the rest of the day helping the boy throw starfish in to the sea. What Can We Learn? The real trick of life is not to be in the know, but to be in the mystery. Human beings absorb 400 billions bits of information per second and we are only aware of 2,000. If you can’t control your emotional state, you must be addicted to it. Emotions are not bad; it is our addictions that are the problem. An addict needs just a little bit more of the stimulus than normal people. No one has taught you intelligently how you work from the inside out. The only way I will ever be great to myself is not what I do to my body, but what I do to my mind. I am much more that I think I am. I am much more than even that. Purpose of intentionally is to (perfect) our creativity… We get to measure the effects in our life by if something has changed. If you study science long enough & deep enough & don’t come out sounding wacko, you haven’t understood a thing. – What the Bleep to do we know