Guilty of Guilt

It's subversive.  It's omni-present.  It's by association. 

Mothers learn it from their mothers, who in turn learned it from religion, who quite possibly made it up.  No one knows where it originated from, or how.

Guilt.  Not remorse or accountability, but the obligation and self-reproach side of the noun.

Guilt's not an emotion whose function directly corresponds to it's sensation in the body. Joy is the feeling you get when you are happy; sadness comes about when you are sad; anger is the rush one feels from feeling that you have been done wrong. Guilt can come about whether you have done something to be guilty of, or not. You can feel guilty for NOT doing something! Ecologically speaking, guilt may have been, at one time, a way of tightening emotional bonds between a human and his tribe, but today our beast-eat-beast society is promoting more and more isolation from one another. If our tribe is all but gone, what greater good does guilt serve? 

The other day I noticed that I was making decisions based on feeling guilty and obligated, instead of from a place of joy.  And if I'm not making decisions for my life from a place of joy, then I'll most likely end up miserable.  Most likely so will you.

Underneath It All

One deft movement had a tight knot of deep, burgundy spirals unfurled and loosely falling around creamy, freckled cheeks and down to the middle of a long, attenuated back.  She's tall and leggy.  Thin and defined.  Her cheekbones and jawline are strong, pronounced, and imbued with a quality that demands a visual listening.  She was sitting next to me, her long winter-paled fingers resting on my forearm. 
"I'm sorry.  I'm trying to impress you right now."  She admitted.  "I catch myself doing things like that all the time.  I'm realizing that I'm always trying to make people smile, or laugh, or say what I think they want or need to hear.  Sometimes I even catch myself making up answers to their questions...."
I caught myself staring.  She was stunning.  I felt stunned.  Her capacity to be that raw and vulnerable sent my head into a tizzy.  How did she know?  We had only chatted a handful of times before...
She met my gaze for a moment.  Then got up to head to the tub where she had drawn herself a bath.  She stopped just before the door.  "It feels really good to know that I'm lovable, even without the fluff."