It’s awfully easy to become discouraged about the world around us these days. It’s seems like every time you turn around there’s some new, large and complex problem that defies solution. At the same time, a mountain of old problems remain unresolved. Many of us try to take action. We give of our time or money in an effort to help others. But before long, we despair that our small efforts can even begin to change things. Even Ira Riklis, blessed with financial success and able to support multiple organizations, feels this way at times.
At moments like those, he stops to take a deep breath and recall a parable told to him years ago by his Rabbi. In it, a boy is walking along a beach after a fierce storm. Beach wrack is piled up in windrows along the shore. Among it are countless starfish, still alive, but doomed to die out of the water. As the boy makes his way, he stops to pick up the starfish in his path and tosses each back into the ocean where it has a chance of survival. His task seems overwhelming—a boy against the vastness of that long beach—yet starfish by starfish he is making a difference. Just as he reminds himself of the boy’s courage and determination, Ira Riklis wants to remind other that they, too, can make a difference, however slight it may seem at times.