The STAR Thrower

 

Have you ever accepted your own limitations?

 

Episode Intro: Have you ever heard a popular story before, only to find out that what you’ve heard is not quite correct? Today’s story is about “The Star Thrower,” a widely-used motivational speech anecdote that is loosely based on a story by Loren Eiseley.

 

Let’s Get Cracklin’, Shall We?

 

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You think you’ve probably heard this one before, if not by another name. Often referred to as “The Starfish Story,” “Legend of the Starfish,” “The Parable of the Starfish,” or “The Starfish Effect,” etc., the basic message of this story is that you should give and do what you can to make a difference in the world, even if the problem seems too big or your contribution seems too small. 

 

You know you can view and buy beautiful home furnishings, framed art, videos, tattoos, and decorations detailing this popular tale via Amazon, Etsy, others. It’s pinned everywhere on Pinterest. You can find a few examples on my Pinterest board located at Tales from the Hearth https://www.pinterest.com/TalesfromtheHearth/the-star-thrower/ for reference. 

 

So what is this story? Ahhh…we’ll get to it soon. Suffice it to say that it’s loosely derived from a 16 page essay published in 1969 by Loren Eiseley. These are two stories that are similar, yet very different, so we’ll go through the popular version of the story, then Eiseley’s original version, then compare the two and discuss.

 

Sources for today’s story are: “The Star Thrower” by Loren Eiseley, The Loren Eiseley Society (LES) https://www.eiseley.org/, and “The Parable” from the Starfish Project located on the Starfish Project’s website https://starfishproject.com/the-parable/. Refer to our episode show notes for all the links.

 

The One Takeaway I hope you get from this story is: To be more effective, you have to ask for help.

 

I hope you enjoy today’s story, “The Star Thrower.”

 

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My husband and I were walking down the beach after a tumultuous tropical storm had passed, leaving a host of starfish strewn across the sand, stranded by the tide. We quickly loaded up the length of our arms and hands with as many starfish as we could and returned them to the sea. “There are so many starfish that we can’t possibly save them all,” I lamented to my husband. I suddenly felt hopeless and overcome.

 

I recalled “The Starfish Story” that I remembered seeing on a framed cross-stitch piece hanging in one of my mother’s friends’ houses. That story went something like this:

 

An old man was walking along a beach one day when he noticed that it was covered with thousands and thousands of starfish—as far as he could see—that had been stranded in the outgoing tide. He came upon a young boy who was frantically rushing to return the starfish back into the ocean, painstakingly throwing them back one by one by one.

 

The old man paused to ask the boy, “What are you doing?” Without slowing down his pace or taking his focus away from his task, the boy replied, “I’m saving the starfish, Sir.”

 

The old man laughed, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference could you possibly make?”

 

Without a moment’s hesitation, the boy picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the ocean and responded, “I made a difference for that one!”

 

The “starfish” here are metaphors for all the good, and meaning, and difference that you’re throwing back into a great big ocean. Every little bit makes a difference, even if it’s for only one person. 

 

But I admit that this story always bothered me. Of course, it’s an admirable story of the power of making a difference, and the boy was working sooooo hard for the starfish. Although this is a wonderful message about doing what you can (even when things seem hopeless), I always wondered a few things about the story. Why did the old man even bother to ask such an obvious question? The man saw the same problem that the boy saw—maybe?—which was a multitude of stranded starfish. They clearly saw very different solutions. Did it not occur to the old man that others would want to HELP starfish rather than leave them stranded? Perhaps the man was a sociopath? I don’t know

 

Why did the young boy reply with such an obvious answer? Was he just being polite because he was raised to respond respectfully to an elder? I always wondered what happened next. Was the young boy successful in convincing the old man to help him? Did the boy even ask for help? One could reasonably argue that the little boy was young enough to not be aware of the need to ask for help, and couldn’t see past the immediate need for action on his part.  

 

Are you dealing with a starfish moment?

 

Like the old man in this tale, how many times have you become so overwhelmed by the thought or perceived scope of helping others that you do nothing?  

 

You may think:

 

“There’s too many to help.” 

 

“The problem is too large, and will take too much of my time.” 

 

or 

 

“What difference can I possibly make?”

 

Or worse, do you just keep your head down and keep working, working, working at a frantic pace, like the boy in the story? Do you think, “Oh, I just need to work faster/harder/stronger?” 

 

Well, YOU CAN’T. 

 

Does this remind you of anything? How many of you are working soooooo hard for a noble cause, but just can’t do enough? Perhaps you don’t have enough hours in the day, or energy to make what you want happen? How many of you give up, or worse, listen to the old man who discourages you instead of helping YOU out?

 

Do YOU even bother to ask for help?

 

Do you realize that you’re limited in energy and time, and the only way to help others is to ASK for help? To put it bluntly, how many of you accept your limitations, instead of compounding the number and quantity of your efforts by ASKING others?

 

If you’re an entrepreneur, maybe that looks like getting a virtual assistant, or asking your partner or a friend for childcare. Remember, you are helping people through the service that you provide.

 

If you work an 8-5 job, are you asking your workplace for flexible schedules and arrangements so you can spend more quality time with your family?

 

Are you soooo busy doing and working at a frantic pace that you’re burning yourself out? Do you have ZERO energy and time for your loved ones as a result? Are you asking your circle of friends or family for help so that YOU can take care of yourself first?

 

Now back to my husband and my current predicament with thousands of stranded starfish on the beach. I recalled exactly what had bothered me about the popular version of this story and decided to act. I was dangerously close to acting like the older man in the story and saying, “This problem is too large; I give up.”  I recognized that my husband and I could only make a small difference to a big problem. I needed to change my attitude—and I realized that I had more tools at my disposal than the characters in the tale. 

 

Neither my husband nor I had the foresight to bring our cell phones to the beach, but we implored fellow beach walkers to help, and to contact anyone they could to assist the stranded starfish. We kept working and asking feverishly, and soon noticed more and more people arriving to help. Before too long, there were no more starfish on the beach (where there once were thousands).

 

• My husband and I could have easily been so discouraged by the massive numbers of starfish that we could have chosen not to help even a single starfish. 

 

• My husband and I could have easily been so overwhelmed by the work that we could have chosen to give up. 

 

• My husband and I could have easily been so overcome by shame that we could have chosen not to ask for help from other people. 

 

Fortunately, my husband and I made a choice to act. We could not complete the task alone, and it just felt right to ask for help on behalf of others who—literally—did not have a voice or a means to help themselves. 

 

As a result of our choices to work through things that were difficult to us, thousands of starfish were saved that day. 

 

We saw, firsthand, a little courage and small actions inspire large results through the power of compounding.

 

I decided to return from our success that day and look up the exact origin of the “Starfish Parable.”

 

What I found was surprising…and much darker than the popular “inspirational” version.  

 

The origin of the story was a 16 page essay published in 1969 called “The Star Thrower” by Loren Eiseley (while the familiar version of this story has deviated greatly from the original source, all quotes below are from the reprinted 1979 Eiseley version (pp. 72 and 89). 

 

The story involved a scientist and “the star thrower”. The scientist was visiting Costabel Beach, where he noticed the presence of the vulturous “collectors” on the beach, who gathered even the LIVING sea creatures for their personal collections. Although he noticed this and thought it was wrong, he didn’t seem to want to acknowledge the problem or become involved in any way.

 

To summarize Eiseley’s story: 

 

Early before dawn, a scientist was wandering along the beach when he observed another man gathering living starfish and gently tossing them back into the ocean. 

 

The scientist approached the star thrower. “The stars,” the thrower said, “throw well. One could help them.” He delved deeply into the scientist’s soul with an unasked question. 

 

“I do not collect, neither the living nor dead…Death is the only successful collector,” the scientist replied as he meandered away from the star thrower and continued along his path.  

 

But the scientist, in spite of his previous indifference, could not stop ruminating about life and the star thrower’s greater mission.

 

The scientist chose life, and feverishly returned to help the star thrower toss life into the ocean, the thought reverberating through his mind about the star thrower: “He is not alone any longer. After us there will be others.”

 

Although the star thrower ultimately influenced the scientist through example, once again, in this version of the story, the star thrower didn’t directly ask for help. In fact, because of the scientist’s delay in agreeing to help, one could argue an increased senseless loss of starfish (or other poached) sea creatures as a result. On the other hand, perhaps it was just part of the journey and good fortune that the scientist agreed to help at all?

 

In the original version of Eiseley’s “Star Thrower,” the conditions are a lot more dire because the characters are battling both the outgoing tide and human poachers. The star thrower must wake up earlier and work much faster than the poachers to help the stranded sea creatures. 

 

Actually, when the star thrower cryptically replies with, “The stars throw well, one could help them,” it seems to transfer guilt to the scientist—and to me as a reader. I’m not sure about you, but when guilt is transferred to me, I admit that I don’t feel good about helping, and I may actually feel worse than I did prior to the ask. Guilt is not persuasive at all to me. 

 

If this were a scene in a modern Hallmark movie, you could imagine that the scientist comes upon the star thrower and asks, “Hey, whatcha got going on here?” The star thrower would most likely reply with, “Gotta hurry to save the starfish from the tide and poachers. Looks like you’ve got some sizeable hands and a mean throw—do you have a few minutes? We could really use your help out here!” Who wouldn’t help after that?

 

Instead, the star thrower was incredibly indirect and used guilt in an effort to persuade the scientist, which wasn’t immediately effective. 

 

The added dimension of human poachers in the story makes it even more critical that the star thrower and the scientist go a few steps further to help solve the root cause of the problem. Perhaps it means providing education and signage around recognizing living sea creatures to limit the problem from uninformed tourists. 

 

In Eiseley’s version, however,  it seems that the “vulture collectors” are informed and intentionally retrieving living creatures. In this case, it seems that organizing a group of supporters and speaking out for legislation and fines for those who take live creatures is warranted. Many beach communities in the United States institute similar fines or legal action for predatory beach-combing activities. 

 

Regardless, asking for help should be a first (or a close second) step in everyone’s journey.

 

Neglecting skills, we are all limited by time and energy in what we can do to make a difference in the world (whether it’s work, charity, our own families and friends, etc.). To help and provide a service to our family and others, we must break down our barriers and the shame around asking for help, and…ask for help. This is the only way we can multiply our efforts and further our reach. If it’s difficult to ask for help, we can reframe the question, asking instead for help on behalf of others who do not have the resources or ability to ask for themselves. 

 

Both of these tales are excellent examples of how we can take small steps to make a meaningful difference in the world, and multiply those steps by asking others. 

 

So if you feel overwhelmed by your situation, just think of the thousands of starfish stranded on the beach…and the cleared strip of sandy beach afterwards…and ask for help. If you see a way to make a meaningful difference, but realize that there’s not much you can do on your own…think of the rescued starfish, and ask. Don’t accept your limitations, but instead…reach for the stars!

 

Did you like both the “inspirational starfish parable” and Eiseley’s version of “The Star Thrower”? I hope you’re encouraged to speak up and ask for help to compound your efforts to throw more starfish back into the ocean!