guilt

is perhaps the worst kind of emotion that can be experienced by humankind.

it is more acute than fear, more lowly than depression, more lethal than anger and longer lasting than anxiety. the only other emotion that impedes guilt from clinching the most powerful emotion title is love.

i was changing in the gym one day and the melody of 'promiscuous' called to me from the tv screen. anxious to find out which artist sang one of my fav songs, i rushed out. imagine the shock of seeing beautiful, im-like-a-bird nelly furtado sashaying seductively to the beat, with a rapper and justin timberlake in tow. i felt a teeny bit disappointed.

and then i mentally kicked myself for judging someone i didnt even know. that's guilt for you. damn first impressions. they never really accurately do justice to someone you hardly know.

so how negative is guilt?

guilt = uneasiness + regret + dispiritedness + unhappiness

its attacks are various; immediately, the morning after or having grown up enough to reflect on the past.

you can feel guilty immediately after snapping at someone who caught you at the wrong time and place.

you can feel guilty the next morning realizing that you weren't thinking straight last night in the fit of rage and ended up saying some rather crude and harsh things.

or, you can look back on your past (relationships, actions, endeavours) and wish you had/hadn't said/done that to someone who actually meant something to you.

there's also the equally disturbing guilt-induced year spent telling yourself to stop procrastinating and start flipping your lecture notes. when you're out partying, or shopping, or doing anything unrelated to your studies, guilt attacks. worse still, it's accumulative and unstoppable. so it's year after year after year of guilt that eats you inside while you make empty promises/ new year's resolutions to never do last-minute work again .

and it never works!

i knew from a very young age that guilt was not to be messed with. i never learnt.

-London's Times Cartoon Archive Science