As poetry is about balance, about light and dark, about giving and taking
As is guilt.
Guilt
From action
From inaction
For not providing someone an opportunity
For stealing another’s opportunity
For not being good enough
For being better
For hurting another
For hurting yourself
For not being hurt at all.
Guilt is directly connected to empathy. If we cannot put ourselves into another’s shoes, if we cannot understand their pain – we cannot feel guilty about causing said pain, or failing to relieve it. Guilt makes us human.
Holding on to guilt beyond a natural cycle of intellectual analysis and stages of emotional change, will make us sick. Rot us from the inside. Make us anxious, depress us. It weighs us down, it causes sleepnessness – guilt itself becomes dangerous.
But a lack of guilt is also dangerous. The lack of guilt is an identifiable characteristic of a psychopath.
If time travel were an option we could return to the moment of action (or inaction) and start over. Make a different decision. Be not in that place at that time. Or be there, but let it be someone else who walks away with guilt.
But we cannot look back. We cannot take back past actions.
There is only one direction in which to move.
We learn in yoga to let go of anything that does not serve us.
Letting go does not mean forgetting, but it does mean moving forward.
Poetry is complex, difficult to understand and slow to process.
As is guilt.
