She Believes in Me

Last night as I was going to sleep, this song was playing in my head -- I probably haven't actually heard it in at least 25 years -- but out of the depths of my inner jukebox it came. We listened to Kenny Rogers a lot when I was a kid -- my cousins had his greatest hits on 8-track in their old-school van, and my Mom had the cassette tape. I remember at the time, when I heard these lyrics:

And she believes in me

I'll never know just what she sees in me...

The way I heard them, and perhaps the way he meant them, was that she believed in him more than he believed in himself, and saw things in him that weren't actually there. And at the time, in my own longing for love, that's exactly the place it was coming from -- believing that I just had to hope I'd find someone to feel and do the same for me.

Revisiting it now, I hear and feel something very different. The place I'm coming from now is one of letting the love in to help illuminate what's already there, inside me -- that other people can see not because they conjure it but because it's in me. I know it is, even when I'm all by myself, but I can see it and feel it even more vibrantly through the eyes of my loved ones.

And unlike Kenny's conclusion at the end of the verse that I cited above:

...I told her someday, if she was my girl

I could change the world, with my little songs

I was wrong

I know that I can change the world, or at least a part of it, but knowing that others believe I can too is a huge comfort in this time of uncertainty in my life.

The video linked above is pure Kenny, but if you're only going to watch one, I'd choose this one where he's accompanied by Lionel Richie -- they are a surprisingly super-sweet duo!