Whatever it is, I don't think I've done it yet.

What I do know is that I have done a huge number of extremely shitty things in my life when, through incontinence and selfishness of all kinds, I have hurt people who did not deserve to be hurt.
The list is huge, but includes a son who grew up with chronic alopecia and the terrible bullying at school that the condition brought on, a daughter who was anorexic for some years and who is only now finding her feet and her true sense of worth, two women to whom I had pledged lifelong support and devotion but who came to realise that I was incapable of fulfulling that pledge and inumerable friends, colleagues and acquiantances who have been let down by broken appointments, promises and hearts.
I used to think I had done a splendid thing in teaching a man to read. He was a traveller/didecoy who worked as a casual labourer on the site where I worked. A feckless little shit who would piss his sub up the wall every Thursday, but not without some charm.
He had a huge chip on his shoulder about not having a trade, and would always say "It's not fair. If I could read I could be a sparks!"
So one night I grabbed him off the site and, instead of going to the pub, dragged him to an adult literacy class run by Camden council. I sat with him for weeks as he painstakingly learned how to read and write.
I eventually left the site to go off to college, patting myself smugly on the back at a job well done. A couple of years down the road I came across him again. Still with a huge chip on his shoulder, only bigger now because he no longer had an excuse for his own failure. And by then he was a raging alcoholic who couldn't even get a job as a day labourer.
So I've come to the conclusion that if anyone has succeeded or triumphed through me, it's despite, not because. And that the unconditional love of children is small recompense for the guilt of a crap parent.
Not that I'm intending to piss on anyone's parade in this thread, but sometimes it does help to see things from the other side of the street. Anyone who can have a mutually supportive relationship with another human being, and who can be a good parent has done enough, in my opinion. For that alone, you will have justified your existence. Sod the warm fluffies and all the rest of the toughy-feely bollocks!