Andando pela praia

While I was walking down the beach, I began to see a man in the distance. As I came nearer, I noticed that the man was bending down, picking something up and throwing it out into the water. He did that many times. Time and again he continued throwing things out into the ocean. As I came even closer, I saw that he was a fisherman. He was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. I was curious. I approached the fisherman and said, "Good morning, friend. I was wondering what you are doing." "I'm throwing these starfish back into the acean. You see, it's low tide right now and all of these starfish are up here on the sand. If I dont' throw them back into the water, they'll die up here from lack of oxygen." "I understand," I said, "But there are thousands of starfish on this beach. You can't possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don't you realize that at this time this is probably happening on hundreds of beaches all up and down this coast? Can't you see that you can't possibly make a difference?" The man smiled, bent down one more time and picked up another starfish. He threw it back into the sea and answered, "I made a difference to that one!" (Adapted from "One At a Time", by Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen, in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Health Communications, Inc, Deerfield Beach Florida, 1993) Tradução texto: Enquanto eu estava andando pela praia,…