Guilt

I had a chat with a professor this week, who gently confronted me about a comment I'd made in a paper. I had said something about how at times, I felt guilty about my privileged upbringing, how I was raised in a nice house in a nice suburban town, where most, if not all of my wants and needs were met. This reality is drastically different from many of the kids and adults I've worked with in the past several years who do not have the privileges I have had. When faced with these two polar opposite realities, part of my making sense of them has included some feelings of guilt.

So my professor basically reminded me that I am who I am because of my background- my strong, loving family has given me the support and foundation I need to accomplish the things I have been put in this world to accomplish. And of course, the old "to whom much is given, much is expected."

I think it is easy for me, and many like me, to fall into guilt, and then cynicism about our backgrounds, about our race, about our privileges, about anything at all. I do feel that some guilt is part of the process of coming to terms with realities in a broken, messed up world. Guilt can also be a motivating factor to make changes in ourselves and in our world. But it can't stop there.

Guilt can't sustain us, it can only get us so far. In the end, it really just gets in the way. It can become a barrier between us and the people we want to love, the people who are different from us.

At some point, I think we have to mature out of that guilt. We have to come to terms with our background (the good and the bad) as part of who we are. I admit that I am not totally there yet, but that's okay. It's a journey, right?