"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.
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!
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