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Have You Heard This Frickin' Starfish Story?

There's a popular story that originated in a 1969 essay by Loren Eiseley and has been repackaged hundreds of times into corny inspirational chicken soup versions, and it's about to happen right in front of you again.

A guy walks down a beach and comes across thousands of beached, suffocating starfish, and a little girl throwing them one by one back into the ocean. "You know you're barely going to make a dent in all of this," the guy says, because he hates kids or something. "The vast majority of them are still going to die. None of what you are doing matters."

The little girl picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean, and turns to the guy and says, "It matters to that one."

So, OK, sure. You have questions. Why does that man hate kids so much? Are we sure that throwing the starfish is good for them? Does touching damage them? Does throwing damage them? Are they able to survive once they're thrown into the ocean, or is the girl only adding starfish corpses to the bottom of the sea? I don't know. Ask a marine biologist. Have the marine biologist provide you a better analogy, then come back with that story in your head.

Most corny retellings frame the takeaway as "Even one person can make a difference!" or some generic moral that completely misses the unique beauty of this story, which is not about why you ought to help (we've got quite enough about that), but how you can get the emotional fuel to keep helping. To zoom in on that point, imagine that in this story, the starfish had faces.

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It's Natural To Need To Feel Something When You Help People

There's a reason even non-douchebags prefer to give a grateful homeless guy a $20 bill than spend their time, say, lobbying for a more robust social welfare infrastructure. It's not just easier; it's instant gratification. We can pour out all our effort to combat injustice or suffering and not even move the needle for the country or the world. Pour out the same effort for an individual, and that individual life's needle can swing in a beautifully visible arc, like a starfish sailing through the air shouting "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes!" And we can feel guilty for needing to see that arc, because then aren't we just Donald Trump, trying to boost our poll numbers by clumsily lobbing paper towels at an utterly devastated hellscape?

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Putting A Human Face On The Needy Changes Everything

Remember when the "Muslim ban" came out? All those stories and images of families separated in airports?

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Without That, You Can Wind Up In A Very Dark Place

How we collectively react to what happened in 2017 -- all of it -- will determine what the future will look like. Looking around, it seems like a lot of the social pressure pushes us toward inactivity in a lot of subtle ways. It can even sound like activism. ("Why bother giving a SANDWICH to A HOMELESS CHILD when the very act of BUYING THAT SANDWICH supports CAPITALISM?") You can wind up insisting on a standard that says anything other than a total overthrow of the system is futile virtue signaling.

For example, I always wanted to share my story above with other people outside the church group, but felt weirdly embarrassed doing it, like a celebrity going, "I'm so stressed out about this school for girls I just started in one of the poorest countries in Africa. I don't know if I'm changing enough lives!" Some of you probably have that reaction to me telling the story just now. ("Did you just call three struggling human beings your 'emotional reward' a few paragraphs ago? Isn't this whole article an excuse for you to boast about what a great person you are? Probably to cover for horrific crimes you commit behind closed doors?")

But I'll admit: I partly do it because of how it makes me feel, because I have found that when it comes to coping mechanisms, this blows everything else out of the water. And damn, are coping mechanisms important right now. When you see that creeping fire swallowing up everything that is good in the world, you either want to give up or lash out -- either through violence or indulging in confusing performance art and getting into a weird arms race with trolls.

Shia LaBeoufActually, what did happen to Shia LaBeouf?

Yes, it's still important to do the boring stuff, to go to city council meetings and circulate petitions to stop putting starfish bait on beaches or whatever is causing this weird problem, and to persist through years of frustrating inaction (the council is in the pocket of Big Starfish Bait). But it's also important to go out to the beach once in a while, pick up a starfish yourself, look it in its metaphorical non-Cronenbergian eyes, and hurl it magnificently into the ocean. For it, and for you.

That starfish story pales in comparison to what the rest of those "Chicken Soup For The Soul" books have. Check one out today.

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For more check out 4 People Who Really Are Making the World a Better Place and 6 Awesome Stories of Bystanders Becoming Heroes.

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