Making a Difference

     I think what gives life meaning is, did I make a difference?  Did I effect someone's life in a positive way?  Did I do anything good for anyone?  Did I help anyone?  Was I friend, a good friend to someone?  Was I a good mother, even ever?  Things like that.  
     You know how sometimes someone really inspires you, especially when you see them overcome really hard obstacles, achieve so much, and complain so little.  
     I guess I want to make a difference in some way.  That is why I involve myself with politics.  I do not think I am just outpouring opinions, like on a soap box or something.  I am really genuine about the things I believe in.  If I could, I would do more, I think.
     Today I have been thinking about the meaning of words, and how the English language has turned words that once had positive meaning, to pop psychology, negative terminology, because they are always used in a negative context now.  One such a word is enable or enabler.  I think of this, because I know that I am one of those.
     I hate to always bring up Alan, but he used to use that word in a positive way, and I had never heard it used any way but negative.  Before he 'fell out of love with me,' I guess, he used to say, "I just want to enable you.  I want you to be able to do whatever you want, to have everything you need."  That was really sweet.
     I have to let the bittersweet past go, and move forward, because nothing can change.  You can't do things over.  You can't make loved ones alive again, when they die.  You can't make the wrong things of your youth, and your children's childhoods, disappear.  You just have to accept everything.  
     I wrote a song that starts, 'when I think about the past, it always makes me sad, 'cause every decision I made was always bad...'  Maybe I am being hard on myself.  Why can't all this new age healing ever really heal me?   Why can't it make me stop blaming myself, beating myself up, for all my mistakes?  
     I wish I were just a better person, from beginning to end, had made better choices.  No matter what anyone says, there is no proof that there is another life in which to do things right.  No one can prove that.  This life could be all there is, your only chance.  Perhaps the sound of rain is making me melancholy.