Why should I feel guilty?

We have arrived at the other side of the guilt coin.
One side is burdened with guilt; this side has no burden at all.

Notice I didn't say they didn't have stuff to feel bad about.  A little digging into their day alone will give us a few things we could put on the table.  Then we move to the larger issues of justice and ethics and family relations and paying taxes.  None of us can stand up to that kind of scrutiny and come away pristine.

Now, I'm not a sackcloth and ashes kind of gal (although they too have a useful place in our spiritual and mental health)....but it is really hard to convince me that your life has been without fault.  You have harmed others, in what you've done and what you haven't done, and you have been harmed by the broken parts of this world. This is most certainly true.

This is true about everyone.  We are all paddling this boat called imperfection.  We are all marked with the signs of selfishness, greed, pride, arrogance...[add your own here]...because that is who humans are.  We get it wrong.  We do wrong. Other humans have done wrong to us.

Now, either you write all of that off as just the cost of being human....which leads to little effort or desire or reason to live a more community minded life.........

or you rank the nastiness of this world.  You place the kind of nastiness you do way down on the bottom of the list of wrongs. Like this. Killed anyone?  No.  Robbed a bank? No.  Discriminated against anyone? No

With those at the top of the list, then Yelled at my children, or Failed to report that minor dent I put in someone's car, or Ignored urgent requests from the local food pantry... are really not important.  They don't really count.

Both paths end up here:  I've done nothing wrong. I don't owe anyone anything.  Why feel guilty?

If that is where you end up, then you are seriously out of touch with yourself and the human community.

Just the same, the Divine Creator who gave you life loves you.