Podcast: Making Friends With Guilt
Is guilt in any way useful? I think about it a lot because I feel guilty about something most of the time.
Does feeling guilt help us to become better human beings?
I don’t think so.
I would rather take joy in doing a good thing than get relief from guilt for doing it. Besides, the guilt doesn’t go away. It is never relieved. It’s just temporarily postponed.
I realize that the only way for me to not feel any guilt would be to have nothing to do with the rest of humanity. In a world of things, I’d never have to feel I hadn’t done enough, or that I’d said the wrong thing.
Guilt comes out of the messiness of relationships. Feeling guilty is a sign that there are people in my life I care about.
I’ve always thought I need to banish guilt, that it is a flaw in my nature to feel it. Only in writing this little essay did I realize guilt’s positive side.
Perhaps I need to breathe in the guilt—to experience its texture and thoroughly know it.
I haven’t tried that yet.
I’ve tried changing the subject of guilt, drowning it out with work, or escaping into fantasy. I’ve tried fulfilling what I think guilt is telling me to do: make that phone call. Write that letter. Send that email.
But I have not yet tried simply being with the guilt, letting it have its space to fully express itself to me.
I still remember the time I broke a small bottle of perfume I found on my mother’s dresser in her bedroom when I was a little girl. That’s my first memory of guilt.
It colors all the rest.
Perhaps it’s time to make peace with guilt, to breathe through it, and to let that little girl finally forgive herself.