“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?”
William Shakespeare, Macbeth
My husband Ron and I are listening to the radio as we drive, and the DJ announces an 18th century oratorio by Kozeluch, another Mozart wannabe. It’s called Moses in Egypt and is distinguished by being one of the first psychological approaches to the Bible. In one scene, Moses’ mother tries to guilt Moses into staying home. Though I didn’t understand the Italian, I could only imagine the dialogue. “What do you mean we’re leaving? After I did such a nice job re-finishing the kitchen? So, the great kingdom of Egypt is not good enough for you?” ‘Let my people go’ becomes ‘let me go.’ Fortunately for the Chosen People, Moses doesn’t succumb to his mother’s guilt trip and the rest is history.
Ron turns to me and says, “My Mom did the same thing. When I wanted to go to Europe to study art, she was so upset, she told me I’d hate the food, all that grease. When that didn’t work she said, ‘Who do you think you are, Da Vinci?’
Recently, after a seminar, a woman we don’t know well timidly approached us. Her ride to the airport had flaked and did it happen to be on our way home? Ron and I shrugged, “Well, it’s not on our way, but we’re happy to give you a lift.” As we rode to the airport, she kept saying over and over, “I feel so guilty that I’m taking you out of your way just to get a ride.”
Finally I said, “Geez, let it go! What do you have to feel guilty about?”
“Well, that you had to give me a ride.”
“I didn’t HAVE to give you a ride, I chose to give you a ride.”
“But you would have felt guilty refusing me, I know you felt obligated, so I feel guilty.”
“Let me repeat. If I didn’t want to give you a ride, I would have said no. I said yes, so for goodness’ sake, enjoy yourself!”
Guilt is everywhere. People feel guilty over eating chocolate, watching American Idol, taking a day off, offending a friend, offending an enemy. I looked it up in the dictionary and there were two major definitions – being guilty of a crime as in “we find the defendant guilty” and a “feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.” Is there an evolutionary value to guilt? After all, cuckoos don’t feel guilty stealing another bird’s nest. Cats don’t feel guilty torturing mice. It’s true that it seems dogs exhibit guilt when you discover they ate your slippers. But I wonder if that is true remorse or just the fear of punishment.
For millennia, humans have raped, pillaged, tortured without any guilt whatsoever. The other night, we rented a Chinese film, “Curse of the Golden Flower.” In this film, everyone is plotting to kill everyone else. Ninjas, arrows and swords strike brother, mother, son with impunity. There is not a moment of guilt or remorse in the film. How can it be that one person cannot bear the remorse of a trip to the airport, but another can murder an entire family or even an entire country and feel ok about it?
When I was about 5 or 6, I went with a group of friends to the local candy store. They were all buying these really cool fake wax fingertips that you put on your fingers. If you bit one, some gooey, sugary juice would come out. I craved the fingertips. I longed for these fingertips. But my parents hadn’t given me enough money for them and all I could get was a dumb pack of Neccos. As we were walking home, I asked one of the kids if I could just “try on the fingertips.” The friend promptly handed his wax delights over.
When did I decide to be a criminal? Before I asked for the wax candies? As he extended his arm to me? All I know is that the second those stupid candies were in my hand, I took off for the woods, running like hell, as if I had robbed a bank. I have no further memory of the event. I don’t know if I ever got caught, punished, made retribution, nothing. I’ve manufactured a vivid false memory of myself, furtively crouching in the skunk cabbage like Gollum, looking left and right as I bite and suck on my booty. “My precious! My precious, ugh, gooey, yucky wax fingers.” Each time I remember this event, I am filled with shame and remorse. But is it because I knew it was “wrong” or because I feared punishment?
Maybe it’s all about fear. Moses’ and Ron’s Moms feared the unknown, feared losing their sons. How many children give up their dreams because of this unnecessary guilt brought on by fear? The woman I gave a ride to feared my resentment, even where none existed. The dog fears punishment. Warlords, cats and cuckoos don’t fear judgment. They have a more primal fear – fear of starvation, of not having enough, maybe even of not being good enough. (Would Hitler have been who he was if he was happy and contented with himself?)
It occurs to me that if I had been grateful for my Neccos, I wouldn’t have needed to experience that kind of remorse. If my friend had merely been grateful instead of guilty for the ride, we would all have had a better time.
Sometimes, I know I could have done better. Maybe I react angrily to a criticism. Or I let my ego get in the way of a decision. I’ve caught myself gossiping, or losing patience with a whining friend. Every day, there are moments when I fall short of being, in the words of Carlos Castaneda, “an impeccable warrior.” Instead of guilt, shame or remorse, I rationalize, excuse myself, push down any clamorings of conscience that might surface.
And yet, perhaps, this is the exact place where we can begin to experience a better use for this uncomfortable emotion. Scientists say that we are only using 1/10 of our brains. People mapping our DNA are puzzling over the fact that only some of the locks in our DNA are opened. Is there more to being truly human? Is it possible that what we call guilt is just a hint of a much more evolved emotion? Perhaps our fear of punishment is just a primitive version of something that is designed to help us become more truly human. Instead of a “fear of God” perhaps it’s connecting me with what author Matthew Alper calls the “God part of the brain.”
When I was in college, I went with some friends to a party. Shortly after we arrived, Penny came up and whispered, “You gotta go for the Kool-Aid! It’s electric!” Having experienced the challenges of functioning while hallucinating, I demurred, but Penny went at it with gusto. I was a little concerned, since we had come in her car, but I was too busy singing Crosby, Stills and Nash songs (what was I thinking?) to worry much. When it came time to go home, I found Penny in the bathroom, furiously scrubbing her hands. “It won’t come off, it won’t come off,” she moaned. I assured her there was nothing there, and we got in the car. I offered to drive, but she insisted. As she drove, she kept wiping the steering wheel. “Damn! Damn! Now it’s all over the steering wheel! My mother is going to know what I did!” I finally made her pull over and drove us home, as she whimpered about the punishment she was going to receive for getting “it” all over the car. Remembering my own acid trip, I recommended she have a conversation with God, and see if he could make it OK. Within minutes, she was murmuring, and finished with “OK, thanks, bye now.”
“Bye now?” I asked.
“He had another call coming in,” she smiled. “But he said it was OK, that the stuff would protect me from cancer in the future.”
“How thoughtful of Him.” All God ever said to me was, “Relax.”
She looked at her hands. The guilt was gone. In its place was pleasure. Go figure.