IMAGE DESCRIPTION:
A man walks to the beach, he just lost his job, his wife, and his house. He looks at the calm, gentle waves of the sea, and decides that nobody would care if he drowned in the water. But just as he put his foot in the water, he was surprised by a sudden splash of something falling into the water. He turns around to see an old man throwing starfish into the blue ocean. Silence washed over them, the only sounds present are the crashing of the waves and the splashes of the starfish. SPLISH! SPLOSH! CRASH! It went on for a few minutes until finally, he spoke. “Who are you and how long have you been here?” asked the depressed man. The Old Man looked at him and began to speak. “You see, I used to be part of the military, and I saw things that will haunt me to my last day. Suffering, violence. . .” he paused. “Death.”; They stood in silence for a few more minutes, until the Old Man spoke again. “I have been here before the break of dawn. I have done this many, many times before. Since the day after I resigned from the Army, which was seventy years ago.”; This confused the first man. “But why are you doing this? Why waste all that time?” asked the younger man. The Old Man looked at him as if he asked a nonsensical question. "Well," began the Old Man, "look at the sun, when it rises high, these stranded starfish will dry up and die."; "So the answer to your question is simple, I am saving lives."; “But why?” pressed the younger. “They are just starfish! Their lives don’t matter!”; “So does yours, and mine, and everyone else on this world. We are nothing compared to this universe.”; “But that doesn’t mean we are trash, no, no, no. Life should not be thrown away just like that, it is a gift, the Greatest Gift of Them All. Every single living thing is priceless and has a right to live, every soul is a soul worth saving,” said the Old Man. The Younger Man stood there, baffled and speechless. Just minutes ago he was considering taking his own life, and now here he is, standing before someone who believes that lives are not to be wasted. There, right at that moment, he decided that he would never give up on life, and that other people shouldn’t too. “Can I join you?” asked the Younger. “I . . . I would also like to save lives.”; The Old Man smiled, and he did just that.
