Feeling Guilty...

"Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving" - Erma Bombec


I seem to be having a lot of conversations lately with people about guilt.  It seems like we are all inundated by it and don’t know how to respond.  Guilt is a gift you don’t want; it’s like someone giving you an ugly Christmas sweater.  You accept it graciously and hang it in your closet for years on end because you just aren’t sure what to do with it.  Sure you can give it away but you are pretty sure no one else wants it either.  You can’t wear it for fear of judgment.  So time after time you open your closet and there it is staring you in the face.  We can hide it far from view, of sight out of mind, but we know it’s still there. While most of the time the guilt is a gift from someone else, we have all heard the term guilt trip, sometimes the guilt is only from ourselves.  In a moment of weakness we buy the sweater, we feel we need the sweater for some reason.

Then there are people who seem to have no guilt about anything, they just wear their ugly sweaters all year round for the world to see.  Am I jealous of these people? Sometimes yes, I would love to not have a care in the world about how my actions affect others, but never the less I think there is a fine line between not having guilt and not having a conscience.  So where do we draw that line?  Eventually we need to let go of some of the guilt before it takes over our lives.  We need to clean out our closets, maybe only keep a couple of ugly sweaters and grab some wine and some friends and have an ugly sweater party!

Grown Ups...

          When my daughter tells me she can’t wait to be a grown up I have to laugh. Maybe I’m laughing because I remember wanting to be a grown up also, or maybe I’m laughing because her reasoning behind this is so that she can watch TV whenever she wants, because apparently that’s all grown ups do! It’s so easy to say “if I knew then what I know now” but without the flux capacitor rarely will we ever be able to experience this and children of every generation will grow up wishing to be adults and then spend the rest of their lives wishing away that responsibility.

          Don’t get me wrong I would not want to go to school all day and deal with the drama of who likes who and who is mad at me today (although sadly some adult relationships can resemble this playground scenario as well). I don’t want to do homework and be told when to go to bed and when to get up and when to clean my room but…I could do without the going to work and paying the bills thing so in that case I would be willing to compromise. I would actually love to go to bed at 7 o’clock some nights, sure I’ll clean my room and you go sit in a cubicle for 8 hours and then mail the rent payment on the way home. Don’t forget to put gas in the car…it will only cost you about 8 weeks allowance!

          Sometimes I think the most complicated part about being a grown up is the decision making process. Sure we all want to grow up and make our own decisions considering these decisions are solely based on if we want to watch Spongebob or Phineas and Ferb, but unfortunately as “grown ups” our decisions tend to be a bit more complex. The one thing I miss now about being a kid is that rules were rules. You don’t talk to strangers, you don’t run with scissors and you look both ways before crossing the street. As adults we tend to make our own rules. Things aren’t as cut and dry as they used to be, just because something seems right does it make it right? If something works for someone else does that mean it will work for us? As adults we have the ability and the freedom to make our own choices and cut our losses but at what expense? I guess I will ponder that as I watch some TV.