The Curse of the Conscience

I would never make it as a criminal. At a college homecoming visit to my sorority house one year, my friend and I helped ourselves to a “Greek Week” (or whatever theme of the month it was) t-shirt from the big box that was carelessly left in the foyer. We laughed at the time, of course, but that t-shirt sat in my dresser drawer completely untouched for years. Just looking at it gave me a pit in my stomach. The curse of the conscience.

Sometimes, I am surprised that I am still standing upright, with all of the guilt I carry around. And usually, the amount of guilt is disproportionate to the degree of the offense. I feel guilty that I never redeemed a gift certificate someone gave me. I feel guilty about that wedding gift I bought but never sent. I feel guilty about that snide comment I made ten years ago or that less than supportive reaction I had to someone else’s good news. I still feel bad about that kid who asked me to skate with him during “East Side, West Side” at the roller rink when I was in the fifth grade (I agreed to the skate, but when he fell, I just skated away). It is really silly if I sit down and think about it. We are all fallible, aren’t we? We have all said and done things we're not proud of. We’re only human, after all.

So from now on, I am going to try to embrace those incidents in a celebration of not being perfect. As a quintessential learning experience. But, in the future, if I ever do you wrong, and you respond with the old adage, “Some day you’ll be sorry” . . . you can rest assured that I probably will be.