I used to want to save the world.
I can remember being 10 years old and writing poems about the troops over in Desert Storm. I've always had a "hippie heart" so to speak and I've always wanted everyone to be at peace. Somewhere or some time along my way, I seem to have lost that connection. That will to do unto others as you wish them to do unto you, or however the saying goes. But what happened?
It's not as though I don't still treat people with the respect I would want to be treated with. I still say "please" and "thank you"...and I am known to pick up random trash on the street or in the park when I'm walking the dog. But that's as far as I let it go these days. I don't make any extra effort to lend a helping hand.
I remember one time in elementary school, one of my classmates' house burned down. I was so very sad for her and I wanted to do something to make it all better. As a class, we collectively got her new clothes and shoes....and I remember asking my Mom if it would be OK if we also got her a doll. I couldn't imagine having lost all of my prized possessions. I have always been a collector of sorts, not so much for the "having" of things, but the memory behind them. For instance, I still have most of my stuffed animals that I've collected over the years as I continued to grow older. And if you were to ask me when and where I got any one of them, I could tell you. This little girl had just lost all of that. I wanted to fix it.
It's safe to say that I have always been a "fixer". There was another time when my family and I were on vacation and we all got into an enormous fight. It was horrible and all I wanted was the yelling to stop. So I came up with the idea of "going back to bed" and pretending that we were all waking up and starting a brand new day. It worked for a little while, but if I remember correctly, there was still some fighting that followed. But I didn't have the mentality then that it takes to need to talk things out to make it better. And even then...sometimes that doesn't even work.
All of my past relationships (with the exception of one or two...including my wonderful husband:) have been guys who I thought I could help. I wanted so badly to "fix" them that I never even realized (until much much later) that if a person doesn't want to change...there is nothing anyone else can do about it...no matter how much you love him. I would get so caught up in their pain, that I didn't even recognize the pain that it was causing me...and the hole that was being burned into my own heart. It's healing now...but I'm not sure if it will ever completely go away.
And that's OK. I learned from these lessons...even if I made the same mistake more than once. My whole life, I heard how you can't expect to make the same mistakes over and over again, expecting a different result. And to any outsider...or in some cases, even an insider....it would have appeared that that was exactly what I was doing. But I never looked at it that way...I just continued to hope to get a different result because I wanted to succeed. I don't take failure very lightly and I'm not one to just give up. But I finally had to choose my battles and except the fact that certain ones, I would never win.
But maybe I wasn't supposed to?
I mean I wouldn't be where I am now without the zig-zagged path I took. And I'm proud of how much I have accomplished. But now I find myself getting back to basics and wanting to gain back what I managed to lose during the time I let myself get lost in everyone else. I'm tired of feeling jaded and held back by my past experiences. I am still capable of making a difference, some kind of mark on this World...no matter how messed up it seems to be.
I often hear myself complaining about how there is never enough time, never enough money, never enough this or that. But all we have in this life is TIME. And we have to make the best out of it. I need to wake up. Stop being a zombie going through the motions and dig down deep into the heart of it....whatever "it" is.
I still do want to save the world. And this scares me. I get so caught up and involved in the things I believe in and if I fail (again)....then what?
I'm only one person. But I still have a voice. A voice, that even if only one person listens to, will scream as loud as she can just to help that one person. That would be something.
It may not be the whole world....but I guess it's a start.
