October 21st, 2019
You can’t save everyone. And, some days, it feels like you can’t save anyone.
When you make it to the other side of certain hardships or experiences, you find yourself wanting to share how you did it in the hopes that you can help another human. That maybe you can prevent a person from making the mistakes that you made before they make them, too. Or if they’ve made or are making the same ones, you can give them hope that through work it can all work out.
This is not how it always plays out in real life.
I try to do this and be that person as much as I can, and I am also equipped with the wisdom that I can’t and won’t help a lot of people, for a whole variety of reasons.
Knowing this doesn’t stop me from feeling like an absolute failure sometimes, though. I consistently and regularly feel like I let my friends, family, co-workers and complete strangers down. It’s a sticky feeling that lives in my ribs and weighs down my heart.
And then I think about all the times that something or someone helped me when I needed it. And I wonder: what if that thing or person had given up before it got to me? Who would I be then? Because for every day I feel helpless and that I have done nothing of significant worth, I think of the days where I met a sign post that told me I was going in the right direction.
And it keeps me going.
You can’t save everyone. But knowing that won’t prevent your heart from breaking when you don’t — and it won’t stop you from getting up and trying again tomorrow anyway.
The Den 