I’d like to give up guilt please. It’s not a word I use regularly, but I certainly feel it often enough. Guilt is like a yoke attached to my negative feelings. It drags them around behind me, pulling me back from a life of unperturbed bliss. Guilt can be big and cumbersome, or small and sticky, but even then, it’s only slightly less problematic. My guilt isn’t the type associated with a serious crime, or even an unserious one for that matter, but it still feels like I’m walking through water with lead in my waders. When life is laden with guilt it seeps into every pore of pleasure. In my case they are just trivial, itty bitty guilty pleasures, and yet they are enough to create guilt and despondency. Here are a few of the burdensome little morsels of guilt that can creep into a typical day: 

• I sleep in
• I don’t want to go out, but my partner does
• I shout at the cat
• I spend too much money
• I eat too much
• I don’t do enough work
• I don’t exercise because I can’t be bothered
• I don’t finish creative projects
• I don’t call a friend back who rang me
• I haven’t spent enough quality time with my kids/wife/dog/cat
• I drank too much (when I was drinking)

There are plenty of others of course. In fact, there are so many that guilt is a serious contender for Orwell’s Room 101, the prison chamber where people’s worst fears are manifest. But I think the last line goes to Shakespeare’s Macbeth who said guiltily: “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!” Well, I may not have killed a king, but if even eating the last piece of chocolate cake causes me such inner conflict, then it’s high time my guilt was dealt with. The word I’m giving up therefore, is guilt.