Member-only story
Why Guilt is a Wonderful Emotion
But only if you embrace it.
I had always been thankful to be someone who didn’t have regrets in life. I understood that people were going to make mistakes in life, but it is through these mistakes that we learn to be better.
And if that’s the case, how and why would anyone ever have regrets? You could be sorry, but not necessarily regretful.
Whenever I heard my friends talk about the regrets they had in their life, I was floored. I would petition for them to reconsider, reminding them that they are who they are today because of the mistakes they made.
They were thankful, but it still seemed to be a cloud that loomed over them. They really resented certain things they did and they couldn’t live it down.
I thought there was only one event that would plague my psyche in that way. I was extremely rude to a girl I liked because she didn’t do what I wanted her to do. And even though I was fifteen at the time, the regret didn’t just go away. The self-hatred didn’t just dissipate. I had to sit with the emotion consistently before it stopped playing in my mind before bed.
However, it came to my attention one day that there was an emotion that for me was worse than regret, hatred, fear or shame — although it is related. In fact, this emotion was so bad…
