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Past imperfect

When guilt becomes a burden, try balancing the books on your minor trespasses.

I don't call my mother as often as I should. My checkbook is a rat's nest. In 1980, I had an informational interview with a busy magazine editor and failed to write him a thank-you note. I lost my great-grandmother's watch. I'm bad at keeping in touch with friends. I've let something rot in the vegetable drawer, again.

All of this is fascinating, I'm sure. But I realized recently that it's also what I listen to all day. It's the droning, drumming little voice inside my head that lets me know, over and over again, what I need to feel guilty about.

For years I have clung to my guilt, believing that it makes me a better person - or at least stops me from being a wholly bad person. But lately I've been thinking that, in fact, it just slows me down.

I mean, let's look at the evidence here. I have now been fretting about that missed thank-you note for twenty-one years. Has that made me write it? No. Do we think I am ever going to write it? Well, aside from the fact that I can't remember the guy's name, that he probably retired in 1992, and that the chances that he, too, has been brooding over this slight for two decades are infinitesimal, I'm sure that any moment now I'm going to pull out a pen and get cracking.

Right. But the thing is, once a nagging guilt like this gets into my brain, it just never seems to get out. It sits there, adding its tiny weight to all the others, dragging me down slowly but relentlessly into the bog of self-loathing. After a while, I don't even hear its particular sound anymore; it's just part of the general drone: "You're bad. Feel bad."

Well, the other day I had a brainstorm. I was sitting at my desk, trying to write but instead castigating myself in the usual half-conscious way, and I decided to make a list. On it I would put everything, every single thing, that I felt guilty about. I didn't know what I would do with the list, but somehow I sensed that just getting it all out there where I could see it would be helpful.

So I began. I don't call my mother. My checkbook. Et cetera. I filled the page with sins large and small. As I wrote, things began to swim to the surface. That thank-you note, for example. I didn't even know it was still in there, but when I thought of it, I felt the tiny cringe that made me realize, yes, I still feel bad about this. So I put it down.

When I finished, I read through the list. Some of it still felt pretty serious - I really do want to call my mother more often - but some of it, as soon as I had dragged it into the light of day, was so obviously absurd that even I had to laugh. And some of it turned out to be just plain wrong. That watch, for instance: I didn't lose it; it was stolen. I can feel bad about that, but I shouldn't feel guilty. Realizing that helped me see what I needed to do next.

I went through the list again, and this time next to each item I wrote down what I could do about it. A couple of times, the answer was just "Forget it," so I crossed it off. Some others had pretty obvious solutions: "Call Mom."

I kept going, naming all the people I wanted to call or write letters to, thinking of tiny steps to take to conquer my chaotic ways of handling money, resolving to buy only vegetables for which I had definite plans. It felt great. But then there was that last little category: the things that still bothered me but for which I could see no obvious remedy.

Yes, that thank-you note. I know it sounds trivial, but I hated knowing that this man had generously given me his time and received nothing in return, and I could see no way to make amends.

Then I saw it: My sister-in-law had just written, asking if she could give my address to the daughter of a friend who wanted to go into journalism.

"Of course," I said. The daughter wrote me a long list of questions, and I wrote her a long reply.

And then, with a light heart, I crossed another item off my list.