To anyone who has felt guilt.
We have all felt guilt at one point or another. It’s something basic, most of us learn it as children, for doing something wrong and our parents making us apologize. We all know how that felt, it was embarrassing, and you felt bad. That’s kind of what guilt is, doing something wrong, and feeling bad about it, or regretting it.
The whole purpose of this letter came from a book I read, called The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. (**Warning: Spoiler Alert**) This book has some heavy topics that have a lot to do with guilt. It is about two best friends, Amir and Hassan. Both from two different social classes, Amir is like an average citizen, while Hassan is like a servant. The two grow up together and become best friends regardless. But in the book we find out that Hassan is raped, and Amir was around a corner, watching it happen, but being too afraid to stand up for his friend. Amir never got to tell Hassan the truth and come clean.
Though many of us have never dealt with guilt to that scale, we have still experienced guilt, no matter how large or small. From eating the last cookie your friend was saving, to going though someone’s things without permission, all the way to even stealing something. We can all relate in the same way. We all feel the guilt these situations can bring us.
A personal example of guilt from my own perspective, is something that happened just this year, of where I gained access to my friends social media without their permission and saw some of their messages. I regretted it and felt guilty until I came clean to them and apologized.
The way guilt works is pretty simple, you do something bad, you regret it, you want to fix it, you apologize, then try to repay your debt to feel free of it. An article I read went deeper into the science behind guilt and why it works, and sources of guilt. Feel free to read up on that as well.
As for how to deal with guilt, the only real way you can is to come clean, apologize, and try to fix your mistake. The longer you wait, the worse it gets. Amir waited too long to go try to fix his mistake, and dearly paid the price for it. He never got to fix it, because Hassan was gone.
Don’t wait, fix it as soon as possible, and deal with the consequences, and you can get through it.
