Managing Editor
Fashion designer Kenneth Cole once said he believes much of our lives is about guilt management and he may be right.
The dictionary defines guilt as a moral emotion that occurs when a person comes to believe that they have compromised their own standards of conduct and bear significant responsibility for those violations.
During the “Life Kit” program, two psychology professionals reviewed strategies for coping with the unhealthy emotions associated with carrying around guilt and then discussed how to transform guilt into a positive force. The professionals said that when you realize that you feel guilty about something you’ve done wrong that creates a personal sense of responsibility that works to motivate us to do better in the future.
When I was about the age of 5 or 6, my mother took me with her to the A&P grocery store and while the cashier was ringing up the purchase, I asked my mother if I could have a 2-cent peppermint from a candy display at the checkout. She said no, but I decided to not listen to her and put the peppermint in my pocket. We left the store, I climbed up onto the back seat of our car, pulled the candy from my pocket and was about to unwrap and eat it when my mother suddenly caught me with it.
She grabbed me by the ear and dragged me back into the store. She brought me to the manager where I handed the peppermint candy over to him and apologized for taking it from the candy display. I was distraught and felt guilty about my behavior and vowed never to steal anything ever again. More than six decades later, I’ve kept that vow, but still think about taking that peppermint and what a bad thing it was to do.
Perhaps that is the penance or positive motivation that the psychology professionals claim I have attached to my guilty feelings about taking the peppermint that day so long ago.
Another situation that pops up every so often in my brain is one that took place near the end of the school year once when I was in high school. I was taking a state standardized Algebra test, and it amounted to more than three-quarters of our final grade in that class. One of my classmates, who did not pay much attention in class and wasn’t a very good math student, demanded that I let him copy some of my answers on the test. He sat across the aisle from my desk and wanted me to not shield my test paper if he happened to glance over at it.
This student was known for intimating other students and frequently used violent tactics to achieve his objectives. He was about a foot taller than me then and outweighed me by at least 100 pounds. Right up until the test started, I didn’t know what I was going to do, and I was too embarrassed to discuss my predicament with my father.
I answered the questions on the test to the best of my ability and although I didn’t go out of my way to safeguard my answers during the examination, I also didn’t make it easy for someone’s prying eyes to copy my answers either. I passed the test easily but to this day I do not know if my intimidating classmate passed or failed the Algebra test.
But I have felt some sense of guilt that I could have told him no when he insisted that I help him cheat on that test or that I may have contributed to him trying to cheat on it. I was physically afraid of him and a coward for not standing up to him and my moral shortcoming is something I’ve had to live with for years since that happened.
Neither one of these issues that I have described kept me from going about living my life, so those instances are not toxic guilt for me, but I do think about each one occasionally and kick myself for not doing the right thing either time.
I did make amends to the grocery store manager at the time and because my bullying classmate died a few years ago, I no longer have an opportunity to confront him about what he did or what he wanted me to do on his behalf. It truly doesn’t matter today yet my personal feelings of guilt persist.
The bottom line is that I’m the only one responsible for my own emotions and my own value system and behavior.
Writing all this down and admitting my mistakes does help relieve some of the guilt that I’ve carried with me for these things. I’ve slowly come to accept that my own guilt may be a way for me to express to other people that I do have a conscience and I can clearly recognize the difference between right and wrong. <
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