I couldn’t believe I finally did it. It was too much to sustain my patience. It was bugging me all this time and I didn’t have the courage to stand up and do it. I had to rise up and confront it. It was a burden crawling all over me. I wasn’t going to sit any longer waiting on a miracle to make it happen. It made me anxious, frustrated and yes very irritated. After hours of tolerating the mind boggling it has done me, I carried my heart in one hand and found my weapon in the other. Torn into bits and pieces, hurt and ruined- I watched boldly over it while making efforts in reflecting the incident, I glared over heartlessly – proud of the accomplished victory over the weak, the defenseless, breathlessly still ‘it.’ GAME OVER YOU. You fly.
Yes, I finally found my peace without anything bugging me. I could finally browse online in peace, write in a bug-less living room, and sip my coffee without any uninvited stops over my favorite mug. Moments later, I had this feeling. The one you, me and everyone feels after knowing that you have shopped too much your credit card was screaming to you numbers you didn’t comprehend, saying no to a homeless man begging for change, and slamming your bedroom door because your parents wouldn’t let you go to your friend’s birthday party. That’s it, the one feeling called Guilt.
I am sure there are more times of guilt I have felt throughout the years than I could possibly count, but the moment I smashed a fly to bits and pieces was a wakeup call to my own existence. I recalled how it was annoying as it flew over me back and forth, like it was making an air force show, fondly knowing that I couldn’t be more irritated. But it seemed like the fly called for its unpleasant ending. And I asked myself then and there, why then did it bother me that I killed the fly? I wondered how could a human possibly not feel guilty killing another human, of exact flesh and blood, whereas I immediately felt guilty murdering a miniature creature?
Guilt comes after committing a certain act of violence, hurt, disrespect, and abnormality to someone. I don’t mean that you should feel guilty after cheating on your diet or not making it to the gym six out of seven times a week, to the extent that you are killing yourself about it. On the other hand, I want you to enjoy every bite of the dessert you crave and have yourself indulged in. The guilt is inevitable as it flushes through your senses and world of satisfaction, as it processes into your system. What I mean is, I don't want you to trip over the guilt trip. Don’t exaggerate the blame because you owe yourself the pleasure and cheating every once in a while.
Then again, when you upset, cheat, put someone down, harshly insult someone, guilt is what you should normally feel afterwards. And it is alright to feel guilty; don’t think it is belittling any part of you. What I would like to bring forward here is what happens after you experience feeling guilty.
Guilt is the step following the hurtful act and the one that precedes our decisions post-guilt trip, which identifies it as the second step in the guilt process. The decisions we make after feeling guilty are usually ones we take when our conscious and hearts concurrently cope to improve the situation. Everyone may have different intentions in taking the step for a ‘fix-up,’ but at least the deed is done and the initiative is there to be made. From my perspective, I believe guilt exists so that we could feel more humane. By all means guilt should not devastate you to the extent that you may decide to even kill the feeling in you. But should you not feel guilt after certain moments and actions you make, then you tend to lose one of the most important merits of being humane and a human- the possession of many different feelings, qualities and persona. Guilt revives your senses and equips your actions into making the steps to apologizing, proving your love, confess your faults, and probably seizing the last words before it’s too late. After all, everything we feel is like building a kingdom: we develop and establish ourselves to expand, discover and strengthen our horizons, abilities, capacities, and our being. It is the only intangible establishment in which we invest so much in (with a possibility of witnessing a few, if not several losses), in order to reward ourselves and generate the largest margin of profit we may ever render: ourselves.
What we decide on doing after experiencing this feeling is variable from one person to the other. But what we should be doing is what makes us substantially significant in our own eyes and hearts, and not necessarily or exclusively in the perception of others. Some find difficulty in admitting their mistakes- because of their age or their pride, which swifts them too far away that every apology appears as a point of weakness they do not wish to portray. Well, age is but a number because age in reality is nothing but digits and if you really consider age so much because you think of yourself as privileged than others because you carry more experience on your shoulders I advise you to reconsider this thought. Age doesn’t mean you are wiser, experience isn’t calculated in numbers and numbers do not mean that you are qualified for anything but for an annual birthday cake and a pleasant celebration amongst your beloved ones. For those who carry their pride significantly high, there is absolutely no justification for your obnoxious pride. Allow yourself to walk in harmony among the hearts around you and find bliss in finding equality, which the entire universe has continuously been seeking, fighting, and dying for until today. Maybe this is the one time we may all find ourselves equal-when our pride doesn’t surpass our humanity. This is the only time in which you should find shame; when you dismiss the forever sought for right throughout mankind’s existence.
Guilt is supposed to make you feel hurt, but the next step after you make your action, is what beautifies and releases the feeling of hurt and pain, and unquestionably counts most. When you decide to mend the person's feelings you have offended and or hurt the sense of relief is irreplaceable. Yes, it does feel like a box full of weights is finally lifted off your chest and the world’s stress off your back. Correct me if I am wrong-but the percentage of times in feeling better after mending a situation and resolving them is much higher than when you decided to ignore it. When you ignore guilt, you are really ignoring no one but yourself. You deny yourself the moment of the real genuine feeling of ‘feeling.’ It troubles us greatly when we deny ourselves anything we aspire for in life-then how about considering self-denial; denying the feeling of what you really feel and what should be felt after committing a hurtful action. The action post-guilt is the interpretation of your true existence-apart from your physical one. It is the compassionate presence of yourself in which nurtures your soul and prepares you for life, allowing you to appreciate its most fundamental ingredients: people.
If you decide to kill guilt, then you decide to kill the only living thing that truly throbs in your heart and molds you together. Don’t murder yourself with your own hands- you never know how and in what form guilt will run through your hands for ignoring or killing it. In a trial, when a villain is accused of a crime he/she has committed, the jury and the court’s judge simultaneously make the final say. When you feel guilty for non-criminal but hurtful actions, your only judge to your guilt is yourself, your conscious, your heart. You are the only who knows that you are lying when you lie to yourself. And you will have to face living with that for much more to come. If you let go of judging your own guilt once, your conscious will keep on making the same visit to you, and then you enable them to cripple you and claim your surrender in becoming inhumane and heartless.
As you walk through your journey of life, I want you to spare yourself looking back into your past with shame, regret and dismay. I wish you find yourself looking behind your back in at least finding remedies to uncured scars, that despite the challenges you face and the disappoints you endured which may have caused you weakness or loss, you find yourself embracing the past with the moments you seized in making the efforts to apologize to those you have hurt. This is one of the only true rewards you are indebted to yourself. Just like we aspire to find ways to face the challenges and obstacles encountered, you should be fond that even in guilt you were able to make a way to alleviate pain, cope with remorse and fulfill your satisfaction with a glorious gesture in pride.
As guilty as I felt for killing that fly to its smashed ending just to earn my peace, I am glad that it has raised the thought of guilt to my awareness. I realized that guilt is a priceless feeling because it brings me into life with sincere feelings and people. I hope you agree with me when I say that I hope, at whatever age we may be, whatever situation we are put in, and wherever we shall be, we do not become one of the people that miss the opportunity in dutifully executing our role as humans. I wish we would be able to pay those whom we owe the love, gratitude, and apology.
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