{"id":47959,"date":"2022-09-26T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47959"},"modified":"2022-09-26T11:00:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T11:00:54","slug":"no-more-guilt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/09\/26\/no-more-guilt\/","title":{"rendered":"No more guilt."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday I talked about how I’ve become aware of many processes and habits that were mostly invisible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wrote about my struggle with envy, how that was once a big, smelly deal, but now starts to dissolve because I catch it the moment it arises, and directly disengage with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s an even bigger and even smellier thing that was recently exposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something that has influenced my life incredibly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel guilty almost all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s like a vast, underlying toxic field that drips and drips and drips and finds its way into many situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guilt has been my hidden companion for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now it\u2019s finally out in the open, ready to be dealt with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I talked about envy and jealousy, I said I don\u2019t really care what the reason for that is, because it simply doesn\u2019t matter for the process of healing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing the source of shitty (mental) habits might be interesting and somewhat enlightening, it might even result in a bit of loving understanding, but it\u2019s hardly transformative and practical, in my experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What IS transformative, though, is seeing right through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is transformative, is nipping it in the bud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You simply put an end to it whenever it shows its head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can feel guilt very clearly now as a presence, a feeling of endless universal debt, something I will never ever be able to repay or repair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe this has got something to do with my years as an anxious, depressed, and fairly aggressive alcoholic, where my modus operandi was to be extremely unreliable, lie, and cheat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Probably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And: whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of human interaction and personal responsibility, I think I\u2019ve made up for that, quite seriously and intensely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve talked to everybody involved in my years as an addict, expressed my gratitude, owned my stupidity and stubbornness, made my amends, opened my heart as much as possible, and worked very, very hard to add value to the lives of many people I don\u2019t even know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I\u2019m trying to say is: I truly believe there\u2019s no reason for guilt, if guilt is about some moral imbalance, where you have to make up for something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means I\u2019m now letting it go, or at least I\u2019m in the process of not buying into it anymore (which comes down to the same).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s incredible to have an epiphany like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we even know these things, how can it be SO clear that we carry around stuff and be able to identify it, how do you even recognize something like guilt in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years and years, I\u2019ve been stumbling around with guilt injected into everything I do and don\u2019t do, and it made me feel like I never did enough to fix it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was guilt about not saving the whole world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guilt about not planting water pumps in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guilt about asking for money for my services and guilt about eventually no longer wanting to help people for free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guilt about things that happened thirty years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And guilt about things that hadn\u2019t even happened yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s incredibly liberating to have had this realization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guilt is bullshit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can know about \u2018wrongdoings\u2019 and do something about them without the energy of guilt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can change your life because it feels good to do so, and not because you want to get rid of what feels bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guilt is just too big of a thing, too heavy, too complex, too paralyzing, and too unforgiving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s time to kick it the fuck out of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @jannesjacobs, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I talked about how I’ve become aware of many processes and habits that were mostly invisible. I wrote about my struggle with envy, how that was once a big, smelly deal, but now starts to dissolve because I catch it the moment it arises, and directly disengage with it. But there\u2019s an even bigger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[99,102,97,117,100,105,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47961,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47959\/revisions\/47961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}