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You have sex with your best friend's girl…you have guilt. That's the way it's supposed to work, right? Guilt is the bad feeling you have when you do something wrong--but wrong is opened to a lot of interpretations. Of course, having sex with a friend's girl is considered guilt-worthy by most(unless he invites you to hit that and then we're talking a whole other thing).
Say you're in a relationship and your mate punches you. Nothing you do could make you deserve to be hit, but lots of abuse victims feel guilty. They "made" their loved one mad, said something stupid, did something bad, et cetera. They feel guilty for doing something that made their lover beat the crap out of them.
Is guilt a one-size-fits-all emotion no matter what the situation? Is it totally subjective and open to interpretation? What makes one person feel guilty doesn't faze others? And is there actually an point to it?
Usually when you do something you know you shouldn't do, feeling guilty is a natural consequence. Religions have been built on the emotion of guilt, some of them offering lists of what you shouldn't do. But how do you know the difference what you're really supposed to do and what you just feel you're supposed to do? It's not always easy to know.
What about cheating on your income tax or stealing paper clips from work? Same thing as lying to your mother? What if your mom asks you things that are none of her business(yes, there are some things that your mother doesn't have a right to know). Some people claim to feel guilty all the time about all kinds of things. Guilt, for them is like the sky being blue. Its just always there.
The emotion of guilt--as opposed to the verdict when a jury foreperson stands up and announces you're guilty--is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes you just feel guilty, but what you feel doesn't always match up to objective reality. Can you find an objective reality about the things you should or shouldn't do? The emotions that don't make sense?
The word "guilt" is defined as a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, whether real or imagined. Its the imagined part that makes this emotion so problematic. Much of how we feel is derived from what we believe, about ourselves, others and the world. Our morals and values help us decide what we "should" and "shouldn't" do, but there are a wealth of situations that don't exactly have clear moral directions.
Truthfully, unless your feeling of guilt motivates you to turn yourself in for committing a robbery or some other crime, its probably not very useful. In fact, most of the time when you stew in guilt, you're just wasting energy. Usually, when people talk about having guilt, it doesn't make them behave any better or treat others with a great deal more respect. They just feel bad and then try to do something to distract themselves from the feeling. Guilt tends to be something you use to drain energy, but you may not actually behave any differently. It's the behaving differently that matters.
You may regret an action--just make sure you learn from it. Regret is understandable and can help you know the choices you don't want to repeat. Change your choices, don't just brood over them.
So, let non-productive guilt go. If you've done something you believe you shouldn't have or you've not done something you believe you should have--fix it. Day-to-day guilt is a crime against life. Quit wasting the emotional energy dragging around a load of guilt. Don't fool yourself, feeling bad doesn't make you a better person. If you can't--or won't--fix whatever is haunting you, feeling guilty is just self-indulgent. Let it go or act to make it better.
