Compassion as well as helplessness of a mystic.

As you grow in material world, with experience many idioms and story heard, in younger age, cast a different shade of teachings behind them.
As one grows in spiritual world or inner world the same idiom or quote or story points towards an altogether different meaning and lesson there from.
Jokes by Osho or small stories by Buddha too have different shades of lessons behind them. In a way they act as milestones in your inner journey! At the same time they get further path lighted to make journey a celebration by raising level of confidence.
A story i heard had a different meaning then for me and now its meaning is changed altogether.
The story is about efforts of a person to save lives of fishes that were washed away to shore by waves of high magnitude.
One by one he was throwing them back to the ocean while millions are just living in pain and fear of dying.
Then another person passing by asked him about his futility of efforts in trying to save lives of fishes as there are millions and he has limited time and only one by one he can save. So he suggested that it is better not to put in such great efforts in saving those few, as their percentage is too low as compared to those which you are unable to save even with Herculean efforts at your end, that he was sincerely putting in actually.
He replied that i care about the one which i can save as it means a lot for that fish.
Today i got another meaning of this story :
The people are the fishes living an ordinary life in pain and fear. Our soul, our God, our inner being, our consciousness or our heart is represented by the ocean.
A mystic or Guru or Buddha or Osho or Nanak or Kabir or Rabia or Gurdjief or Zarathustra or Mahavira is the one who try their best to free us from pain and fear. While millions they are unable to save but yes it affects the one who is saved as he is saved for eternity as he enters the infinite ocean of emptiness or Kingdom of God as Jesus said.