I don’t even know what to say about this – my best learning experience, which means I haven’t learned a thing, or have learned so much that it’s hard to choose. Let’s go with the latter. Of course, I might not give the same answer tomorrow as I give today. But this year, collectively, I think I have tamed the guilt monster.
Why does a person feel guilt? It’s a pretty useless emotion. There are all the old Jewish mother jokes, and I am a Jewish mother – we’ve joked about guilt our whole marriage. “You go and have fun. Don’t worry about me; I only fainted two times today but I’ll be fine. You just go and have a good time. Nothing to worry about.”
I’d be interested to see if guilt felt by women varies by generation. I am the leading edge of the baby boomers, but even by the time I graduated high school, I didn’t have the benefit of that much maligned term “women’s lib.” No, my generation was by and large obedient. We were urged to go to college and become teachers or nurses because if something happened to our husbands (NOTE – we were trained up to know marriage was first) we would have something to fall back on (NOTE – we were not expected to work, just to be a good wife if the worst happened and we had to support our husband or he died early). It was also acceptable to become a secretary for the same reasons.
Couple that with the nurturing we saw our moms do (if we were lucky enough to have a great mom like I did), and you realize how those internal expectations and pressures were accumulating. Our moms made our school lunches (no money to buy lunch – were they even available?), washed and ironed our clothes (I never use an iron), sometimes even made our clothes. They served well-balanced meals, and when we were sick (even if they were sick at the same time) they pampered us. They made sure the house was quiet and calm when Dad got home from work and told us not to bother him until he’d relaxed and read the paper. They went to PTA meetings, worked at school carnivals, and took us to music lessons. They even made sure we practiced!
You get the drift. We grew up in the nurturing mindset, not the achieving mindset, and then the women’s movement exploded. How innocent those early days seem. We could do everything! Bring home the bacon and cook it up in a pan!
Well guess what? We couldn’t do everything and I think much of our guilt – MY (former) guilt – stems from being conditioned to think of others first, fulfill others first, but to still become fully actualized human beings while we raised great kids, supported our husbands, brought home a paycheck, became president of the Booster Club, and on and on and on. If we had to say NO or weren’t so great at something, we felt guilty. I used to feel guilty although I may not have said the word guilt out loud in my mind. And I forgot – we were supposed to be well-groomed and look smashing at all times.
Those days are past. You know what? I’ve realized this for years, but this year I finally internalized it, that I am just going to be who I am and do what I can do, and the heck with it. Maybe getting older has something to do with it because energy does decrease, darn it. But we are all responsible for ourselves and our choices, and as long as we aren’t being irresponsible (i.e. harmful, reckless), we aren’t responsible for living up to anyone else’s image.
I had a reminder of this recently. My husband and I went on a seven-night cruise to Mexico, and while we were gone, my uncle died (a severe blow to my 91-year-old father), and my mom, who is lacking a short-term memory, fell and broke her wrist. (My sister does a lot of their care.) When we got back I went to my parent’s house right away. (We all live in the same town.) My sister as well as my oldest daughter were there. Or maybe I went with my daughter – can’t even remember! Or maybe she wasn’t even there and I told her about it afterwards (lots has happened in the last week.) And it was just a week? two weeks? ago. I handed my sister the gift I bought her from Mexico and she started to give it back, saying, that’s ok, you don’t have to bring me something because you feel guilty. No, I said, I always bring you something when we take a trip, remember? I brought you things from Italy and China…
My daughter later asked what I had to feel guilty about. Nothing, as far as I was aware. I couldn’t help it that things happened when we were in the middle of the ocean. I didn’t feel guilty about going on vacation. I wondered if my sister was thinking I should have been there and shouldn’t have gone, and that’s when I knew I had managed the guilt monster.
Because this was my reaction. Maybe my sister had been thinking that, but I still didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. And she didn’t mean anything by it either – it was just a stress reaction, but it made me reconsider the whole guilt thing. I do what I can according to who I am and what I can manage. I’m not going to worry about if someone else thinks I should have done this or that, as long as I am fine with myself – and this is NOT the same thing as being selfish. I suppose that means I’m not feeling guilt.
That’s the lesson I learned this year. Finally. It’s about time.
And you know what else? Guilt is meaningless. If you aren’t doing something right, don’t feel guilty about it. Correct the problem.
