Have You Let The Past Get You Down?

If you happen to be a psychopath, this one probably won't apply to you. People wired that way don't carry this kind of weight, which is partly why they never feel the need to change. For the rest of us, guilt and shame and the low gray mood that follows can pile up fast. They get heavier the longer you refuse to put them down.

There's nothing wrong with wanting love and attention and a little support now and then. Those things prop up the ego, they lift self-esteem, they make the day feel survivable. The trouble starts when all of your attention points outward, so far outward that one small insult or one dropped plan is enough to capsize you.

Lately I've been clearing out my house, and somewhere in the middle of that I started clearing out my head too. Feelings like guilt and shame don't just visit. They lodge in the unconscious and fasten themselves to the things you did, the things that were done to you, and the things somebody taught you to believe along the way.

What tipped me off was noticing I still carried guilt over outcomes I never set out to cause. I hadn't planned for them to go wrong. They just did, and the fallout felt so total that for a while I was sure my future had gone dark on account of it.

More recently it hit me that I'd been shouldering far more of the blame than was ever mine. At the time those things happened I couldn't have known how they'd turn out, and I certainly didn't grasp that I was supposedly so responsible for them.

Think about the phrase "I can't forgive myself for." Say it enough and you hand other people a gift. Anyone who played their own part in the mess can now quietly slide the whole load onto your back, because you've already volunteered to carry it.

So I'm working on unhooking myself from all of that. I'd rather aim at what's ahead and put the lessons from my mistakes to use, for my own sake and for anyone else they might help.

A note on something eating at me right now: I've been deep in politics these past months, and the candidates and parties bother me. They tune everything they say to what they guess people want to hear instead of saying what they mean, what they'd actually do, and how on earth they'd get it done. The part that really gets me is how they dodge responsibility for the damage they've already caused, the very damage that should disqualify them.