On the pervasive quality of guilt

I am not special, though by the very same reasoning, I could be. That which makes me great renders me indigestible to others - emotionally, of course, but I can't completely dispel with the risk of triggering someone's bowel movements.

I find that people contain multitudes, and their judgement is fickle, the cognitive dissonance required to process the complexity of the world, are in stark contrast with how often I struggle to change my mind about canned tuna. It is disgusting and nutritionally worthless, yet I crave it in my mouth with Italian dressing, which changes nothing, for I loathe the very idea of it and the smell of it makes me sick to my stomach. Why must I stand in the way of my own happiness?

The Germans have a word for doing, and you will laugh, but it is Tun.

And as I have mentioned before and will likely mention again, I see a therapist regularly to work on myself: to learn how to observe the world without judgement, which I then use to self-harm and self-sabotage. My actions in the past have been reactionary and driven by panic to the degree I've lost sight of who I am and who I want to become, and no matter how successful I appear, I have to pave my way back, to stand a chance to leave this world a happy woman.

My therapist and I spend 5 minutes every session doing absolutely nothing with our eyes firmly shut, and somehow it is both challenging and self-affirming in a way that makes us better people.

Baffling as it may be, my relationship with doing became contentious. I am angry that the more I think and rationalize, the less me I become, and I am angry that the reactionary and driven decisions I don’t stop to think about end up the best I've ever made, and I can’t take credit for them because I don't feel like I had made them. I am angry that while everyone understands, no one has a satisfactory answer because hard questions never seem to. To understand something profound and existential, it isn’t enough to have the answer, it isn’t enough to stitch it on a throw pillow or print it on a poster you decorate your living room with. To understand a profound truth, one must feel the excruciating pain of it and pain is tough to sell.

The very reason we buy things most of the time is to avoid certain kinds of pain. Sometimes the pain we’re avoiding is obvious like in the case of hemorrhoid cream. Sometimes someone hurts us intentionally to soothe pain with their product: «You do not wear skirts often enough and therefore your legs are hairy and disgusting. Use this razor to become smooth like a dolphin, as any woman should.» The easiest pain to trigger is very well guilt.

Guilt is the driving force of the economy, the parenting, the romantic and platonic relationships, it’s ubiquitous and it is real. Forcing guilt on someone to control them is called a «guilt trip», because it takes you places and comes at a cost. How often can you violate someone before they stop trusting you? That depends on how nice you can be and how familiar that person is with violence.

And since I know violence intimately, affectionately, frighteningly, I’m too good at recognizing it and too slow to understand that being violent doesn’t make you a bad person, because bad people don’t exist.

It was a compelling idea that they do, and I believed in it whole-heartedly, and since I occasionally fell victim to heinous acts, and made sense of them by repetition, I believed to be a bad person, too.

But the truth is, no one enters this world with the intention to do harm. Violence is the self-perpetuating side effect of communal living, and its slithering accessory is guilt.

It doesn’t mean we can’t stand to be kinder, more considerate people, but it does mean we take for granted all the ways we already are. That is human nature.

It doesn’t mean inaction can’t be violent or that the excuses are acceptable. All violence can be explained, and you preside judge and jury over whether you deem it unforgivable. Forgiveness is yours to give, after all.

But the violence you direct towards yourself is subtle and requires no reprieve. We even glorify people who are prone to it, like athletes and tortured artists. And then we wonder, how we could ever admire someone who self-harms publicly at the first sign they hurt others in the privacy of their personal lives. That’s what we call evil, because it is wrong and as it was hidden from us, it must signify guilt, and if there is no remorse, it is more wrong. But not all remorse is good remorse because some remorse is a lie, and lying is just more wrong on top of a thick layer of wrong that is violence and all that must be fought with more violence lest we all fall victim to the violence that began this in the first place.

The judgement of evil helps us survive, but the guilt that comes with it will not let us thrive and so the cycle starts anew, but this time we become the evil we fought.

The pain that comes with realizing you are no better than the people who have hurt you is indescribable and it can’t be soothed. The intricate tapestry becomes black and white in its sharpness and you see yourself in it, bad and unforgivable. Not because you meant it, but because you have done it.

And while that pain is visceral and necessary, the judgement that comes with it is not.

You’ve realized you’ve done wrong, but it doesn’t make you wrong and if you believe to be wrong in perpetuity, what would stop you from continuing to do wrong? What would move you to make amends?

The knowledge of good and evil was in an apple, and the serpent tempting you was simply guilt. Judgement reserved for beings less complex than us got us kicked out of paradise and now we are here, not only judging others, but judging ourselves to our own detriment. So now what?

I don’t know about you, but if all I have to do to understand is sit quietly, listening to my breath, feeling the pain of being a small branch in the root of all evil, I’ll try that.

And then I might forgive myself one day, maybe see all of the good in myself the very next one.