There's this little feeling called guilt. Although it's only one out of many emotions, most people can agree that guilt is a miserable feeling to have. Knowing that you are a witness to, or the contributor to a wrongful event that compromises the ideals or morality of any individual is often a dooming ticket to acquiring guilt. Everyone has had their guilt trips, whether large or small. Either way, people deal with guilt in their own ways. Some simply distract themselves from their guilt, some wallow in self-pity because of their guilt, some people go out an apologize and some people go the extra mile to make up for their wrongful actions. I can't prescribe any solutions of getting rid of guilt, but a great way to help is to somehow let out some of that guilt. Keeping all your guilt pent up inside is not a healthy habit and could possibly drive one insane. Therefore, letting some of it out by talking to someone or apologizing will help relinquish some of that guilt.
As bad as guilt gets, a worse feeling can be disappointment. In my opinion, depending on who you receive disappointment from, it can feel even worse than guilt itself. The feelings of disappointment against you especially hit home when someone close to you, say a relative or wicked close friend, reveals their disappointment in you. I'm sure many people have also had this experience before. The disappointment of a close friend or relative often inflicts guilt and leaves you thinking and most often regretting about the situation that has caused such disappointment. Disappointment is harder to relieve as it is a feeling felt by someone else towards you. Therefore trying to get rid of someone's disappointment in you requires wonderful social skills to apologize to that person and somehow make it up to them.
This blog entry has actually kind of depressed me. However, as I sit in my room avoiding the rest of my statistics homework while listening to the Killers, I'm coming up with blanks for my third paragraph. I remember when I was young, around 4 or 5 years old, I thought that being a 10 year old was amazing and that you were taller and cooler. When I was 10, I thought being a 15 or 16 year old would be amazing and I would be one of the giants carrying around large books and doing whatever else we do. Now at this age, when I look at the younger kids I think: "I used to be one of those kids looking up at an older kid like me". A point I'm trying to express is that we don't notice how much older we are than we were before and how we are now the generation that the younger school children look up to.
I completely agree with you about dissapointment! When someone says to me "I'm really dissappointed in you" it's the biggest stab in the gut. I feel like they're syaing "you deserve to feel guilty" which makes the guilt even worse.
ReplyDeleteEric- GREAT post. This made me think about a lot of ideas. A pure stroke of genius. It is definitely the worst feeling to feel like you have disappointed somebody you care about or let them down in some way. Is that because we don't even realize how high of an esteem they held us in before we messed everything up and failed to meet their expectations? The truth of the matter is that the less one worries about the expectations of others, the better off one often is. Expectations are good to some extent, but the most important thing is to have high expectations of yourself and to not let yourself down. Great philosophizing with you.
ReplyDelete