A friend asked me this Q, and I responded…
AW: What is guilt for?
RT: Guilt doesn’t have a purpose. What I mean is that no single person constructed the notion of guilt. It’s a socially evolved emotion. Somebody didn’t come up with it to serve their plan. It’s not an ingredient in the mud of which we’re made. We don’t receive guilt. It’s not a gift. It can’t be transferred. But it seems like it comes from somewhere else. When I hear the scolding voice of my sixth grade teacher, Miss McPhail, it’s not guilt I feel, but shame. And shame has a purpose. Certainly. But that’s not the question you’ve asked.
You want to know about guilt. Well, lemme tell ya’– I’ve got it. Guilt, I mean. Not the answer. Guilt feels like a choice. Not between. Whether or not. Like a choice I make because I know I’ve wronged someone. It can happen for all sorts of reasons. Irresponsibility: I didn’t look before I changed lanes. I didn’t try hard enough to remember your birthday. I have small guilts like these, but they’re not the guilts held for long. And their purpose is clear. Remembering these mistakes, and carrying them with me, challenges me to become a better person. These guilts hang on me like a the smell of closets. But they are not necessarily permanent, and I don’t think these are the kinds of guilts by which we define our identities.
And they are not the guilts that need to be wrestled. Those are another sort entirely. Somewhere in your past, you made a choice. Something told you not to make it. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It was cowardly. It was petty. You choose it anyway. And it changed something in the world. It changed something human. It changed you, and it changed someone who matters to you. She wants to be left alone, and you know that’s fair, but you make sure she still has to deal with you anyway. You think that you’re a fair person, but he hurts your feelings, even accidentally, and you say something you know will hurt. You know she’s been your best friend for years, best ever, and when she needs you to be something difficult, you’re afraid, and you hide inside the solace of something you know you shouldn’t. It changes her. It changes you. But the act itself falls away, drifting into the past. If it were still here, you’d undo it. You’d leave her be when she asks. You’d pick up the phone and listen when she needs to cry. You’d choose the friendship you know you should. You’d cut him some slack because he made a mistake. But you can’t. It’s over.
But something about it isn’t over. You keep moving through time, away from that moment. But somehow it feels like this decision, this act, moves forward with you. But if it’s in the past, then something else must be moving forward. Sort of like a wave, an off-key bell toll sounding on past its own ringing. But what is that sound? What is it that has such power to change an identity, the atmosphere of so many subsequent experiences? It operates on at least two possible levels.
First, it might establish something about myself that I’d rather not accept. I thought I was a good person, but how could I be when I refused her request to be left alone for a while? Maybe I’m not the person I thought I was. Maybe I don’t have the strength to live the life I desire. There’s a fear here, at the heart of this guilt.
Next: more levels on which guilt operates, and what it does within me…