The Starfish Would Tell You The Difference

We are having lunch with a few friends at the UN cafeteria. While I am trying to satisfy my hunger with a bowl of healthy-looking salad, one of my friends says “Americans are strange. Just like the poor, the rich is also troubled by the financial crisis, but there is solidarity.” What solidarity is he talking about? “A restaurant in Colorado is serving lunch and dinner to the poor and unemployed for free. They get to choose their dish from the menu and leave without paying a penny.”

Another friend of mine says that at the end of the nightly newscasts, they talk about a number of good things that are happening in the country just so they can boost morale. “Some dry cleaners clean business suits for free for those who have job interviews. A wedding dress store in Alabama is giving away free wedding dresses to unemployed women who are planning to get married. In some cities that are badly stricken by the crisis, relatively well-off customers are not only paying their own checks but they are also paying for those who look like they need the money. Before leaving, they quietly tell the waiters, ‘I have a job and I have some money. Buying dinner for a family in need makes me happy.’”

“In another city, whose name I can not remember, there are people who pay the highway tolls for the car behind them.” What happens next? “The people in the booth tell the next car that the toll has been paid. The driver pays for the toll anyway, giving the next person in line the chance of not paying for the toll. It finally comes to the person who would appreciate saving the toll money. ”

My other friend, who lost a lot of money due to the economic downturn, is whining, “My GM stocks went down the drain. Don’t you see what happened to a giant company!? We are in a recession; the unemployment rate is hitting record highs. These stories sound nice, but what difference do they make?”

“What difference does it make?” reminds me of a beautiful story about a starfish. It gives a lesson to those who are going through tough times about the need for social solidarity.

Once upon a time, a man was walking on the beach. He saw a young man bending down, gently picking up the starfish from the sand and throwing them back into the sea. As he came closer, he asked the young man “Good morning. Why are you throwing them in the sea?” The young man replies “The sun is burning hot. If I don’t throw them into the sea they will all die on the sand.” “But the beach is miles long and there are starfish everywhere. What difference can you make?” The young man listened respectfully, then bent down and picked up another starfish. As he threw it into the ocean, he said “I made a difference for that starfish.”

The biggest discussion of last week was Bernard Madoff’s sentencing. The 70-year-old investor has committed the biggest money fraud in history using a Ponzi investment scheme. Bernard Madoff confessed to the fraud at the court in only ten minutes. The judge stated that he would be sentenced to 150 years in jail for 11 different counts. The story of Madoff and the thousands of innocent people, various companies, organizations and labor unions that he defrauded is far from over. A number of villas in Florida, yachts in the French Riviera and two planes are just some of Madoff’s and his wife’s properties. So where is the 68 billion dollars? You can’t just hide that much money under your pillow! Was Madoff alone in this gigantic fraud? Attorneys are looking for answers to these questions.