Guilt; it’s become a dirty word in today’s world of voyeuristic values.
But guilt is a healthy emotion. A normal feeling that comes from having done something wrong, hurting yourself or another.
PICTURE: Eric Ward/Unsplash
In fact, a symptom of a psychopath is not feeling guilt for their crimes. Is our avoidance of guilt creating a sick society?
The problem is not guilt, but that we don’t know how to deal with it. To deal with guilt we’ve got to face our fault – make amends, say sorry, stop doing the crime. This is difficult and takes courage.
Instead our society often opts for the easy way out; denying that what we did was wrong. The only problem is, such denial never really deals with our guilty, it only hides it away to fester.
What guilt really needs is forgiveness.
Paul Clark’s musings can be heard on radio across Australia and at atthetop.org.au.
