In a Moment #80
The other day while walking to the train, I felt a deep swell of gratitude emerge. This feeling of gratitude, so potent, that it pulled my attention from whatever I had been thinking, and I found I immediately started listing the things I was grateful for in that moment — the sun shining brightly on my cheeks, the ability to walk and move freely, living in this remarkable city. As the list continued, I watched that feeling of gratitude morph, it grew, it shifted shapes, filling my heart, transforming into joy, into LOVE for this life that I am experiencing.
And just as quickly as the joy settled in, there was a contraction. A pit in my stomach, paired with a thought in my head, “How can you be joyful, happy, grateful at a time like this, when there is so much suffering that exists?” Guilt began to emerge, pushing into that joy, that gratitude, that love. The emotions swimming around each other, marbling in my mind.
I’ve encountered this experience before, and I imagine you may have as well. These moments in which we taste the sweetness of this life, only to be pulled out of it by guilt. The feeling that there is more we can do, more we are obliged to do. Guilt is a difficult emotion, at least it is for me. When it surfaces, my typical reaction is to identify the source and define the action I can take to soften it. Do I need to apologize? Is there something tangible I can do?
Brene Brown writes about guilt, among many other emotions, in her book, Atlas of the Heart. In the chapter titled, “The Places We Go When We Fall Short,” she writes “ Like shame, guilt is an emotion that we experience when we fall short of our own expectations or standards…We feel guilty when we hold up something we’ve done or failed to do against our values and find that they don’t match up.”
This got me thinking, what if the origin of that guilt is the truth about this life? We are all here on this earth to move through it together. We all happen to exist at the same time, against all the odds. This is something I reflected on in a previous newsletter and feel it’s worth repeating:
…lately I’ve found myself thinking about what it is to be human and how remarkable it is that any of us are even here in the first place. I’m not simply referring to the evolution of our species, how we all trace back to that primordial goo from millions and millions of years ago. I’m talking about each person you encounter is a feat of existence. Stay with me here — out of the 300 million or so sperm cells, one connected with an egg and created YOU. These are roughly the same odds as winning the Powerball. But the thing is, your existence isn’t simply tied back to your parents, those the same odds are at play with your parents, and their parents, and their parents. It goes on and on, the compounding with the odds of you being here right now, growing increasingly more rare.
And so is it not our duty to connect with those around us? To offer love, support, kindness to as many people as possible? If we are so fortunate to experience joys and beauty in this life, is it not our responsibility to share these experiences?
That stirring of guilt can serve as a reminder of this responsibility. A gentle push to reach out, to volunteer, to connect, to simply smile at the person who passes by on the street. What happens if we were all to move through this experience of life in such a way?