The importance of making a difference

EDITOR’s NOTE: Samantha Paine, a senior at Fremont High School and a member of the PRIDE of Newaygo County teen substance abuse prevention team, recently won first place in the Public Speaking Challenge at the annual PRIDE World Drug Prevention Conference in Cincinnati. Here is the text of the winning speech she delivered at the conference:

One of the stories that keeps my team going is the “Starfish Story.” It goes like this:

“There was a young man walking down a deserted beach just before dawn. In the distance, he saw a frail old man. As he approached the old man, he saw him picking up stranded starfish and throwing them back into the sea. The young man gazed in wonder as the old man again and again threw the small starfish from the sand to the water.

He asked him: ‘Why do you use so much energy doing what seems to be a waste of time?’

The old man explained that the starfish would die if left in the morning sun.

‘But there must be thousands of beaches and millions of starfish,’ exclaimed the young man. ‘How can your effort make any difference?’

The old man looked down at the small starfish in his hand and, as he threw it back to the safety of the sea, he said: ‘It makes a difference to this one.’”

I hear it all the time from kids at my school. “Why perform at schools? The kids don’t want you there, so there’s no point.” My response, every time, is that we have the chance of making the difference to just one person, and that’s what makes everything worth it. I got to experience the feeling of making that difference personally, and I don’t even know how to put it into words. It’s the “PRIDE Magic.”

Being on PRIDE of Newaygo County has given my teammates and me the opportunity to travel around the state of Michigan to spread our drug-free message to our peers. At one school, we were given the chance to eat with the students before we performed. As I was talking to the students, I saw a girl sitting and eating by herself. I knew how she felt because I’ve had to sit by myself at lunch before, so I got up to talk to her. Just as I sat down at her table, the bell rang for the students to go back to class. As the girl got up to leave, she smiled at me.

Our program that day covered a variety of information, including stereotypes, suicide and the effects of drug use. As we were performing, I kept trying to pick the girl from the lunchroom out of the crowd. But to my disappointment, I didn’t see her.

After the program, as my team and I were packing up sound equipment, I saw her. She was walking toward me, and she pulled me aside.

She told me that she was impressed with our performance. She also told me that she had never really had friends before, merely acquaintances, and because of this she was going to go home that night, and commit suicide. She thought that, because she was the girl that no one paid attention to, no one would care if she were gone. I said that she was absolutely wrong. Her response to me was that I was right; that our program helped her realize that she would be missed.

The reason she told me this was because I actually made the small effort of trying to talk to her at lunch, and she realized that there were more people in the world than those at her school. I told her that, if she committed suicide, there were so many people that she would not get to meet, and that they would not get to see how wonderful a person she was.

Our team performs for over 20,000 people annually, and just making a difference in one person’s life makes all the hard work worth it.

That day, I had my chance. Just like the old man saving the lives of those starfish, I made a difference in that girl’s life that day.