I was raised catholic, something that is somewhat synonymous with guilt and conscience, granted I think it was more filled with guilt and a sense of “never good enough” the generation before mine but I do get the idea of never quite measuring up as that perfect squeaky clean believer. This is not a review or commentary on the particulars of religion so before you close the page, feel at ease. This is a post about guilt and conscience-the good, the bad and the ugly.

As a basic idea guilt is something I feel is our morality compass, it tells us when we are straying or not doing what we feel is right or honest. Guilt can and has become something that gets under our skin when we feel guilty about not getting enough for our families for holidays or felt like we didn’t handle something the way we should have-this kind of guilt tends to cause our neurotic tendencies where we are always on the fence with what’s right or wrong and there are always family members that feed whether right or wrong into our guilt complexes we develop over the years. Guilt is pointless if we can’t do anything about what we are guilty about, there is a certain point where we need to leave that guilt behind and move on.

What I am writing about is the good guilt-the good guilt that these days has been painted over with rationalization and the old excuse life is too short. Guilt keeps us from doing what we shouldn’t do, regardless if it feels good or it’s not my fault. I believe there is right and there is wrong and unfortunately if you rationalize everything and justify everything you do, guilt takes a back seat to rationalization. I recently heard a commercial about a show about mistresses and the introduction was about it being a personal journey of discovery-your not cheating, your just discovering yourself-how quickly something wrong becomes something almost heroic. Another option-life is too short to put your kids first, you need to enjoy your life-you deserve it. All of these rationalizations allow good people to stray from what they think is wrong to justify anything that feels good.

I talked with a friend recently about woman and men being friends-I believe they can be friends but there needs to be a sense of respect and honoring each other first-with respect and sense of honor it keeps the relationship from going somewhere that would not be positive or right for either. This brings me to another aspect that we as a society have somehow lost-a sense of the acting exceptionally-we see this in our politicians and with a bit of tears and an apology they are back in politics. Shouldn’t we expect the highest standards of morals from each other and our politicians. We should but when we rationalize everything and make everything gray, there really isn’t nothing right or wrong-it has to do with what you feel at any given moment.

Before you think I am being sanctimonious, I am not standing in judgement of anyone, nor do I think any of us have that great position to judge others because we all have our character problems. What I am saying is that guilt is not such a bad thing and rationalization and justification is a  slippery slope. I feel like these days being empowered, we are empowered to do what we want because life is short. I think a little bit more guilt and a bit more expectation of a higher standard of moral character would go a long way in our society today where we are desperately trying to remove all expectations from our kids, our politicians and our society. There is right, there is wrong-guilt is the compass that keeps us on a path we can be proud to share with our kids and their kids so maybe we’ll have to apologize less.