"Time" guilt

There are different types of guilt. Some are good and some are bad. Frankly, I haven't researched the topic enough to speak authoritatively, but here are a few of my thoughts on the topic.

The guilt we experience when the well-formed conscience says "what you are doing is wrong - stop, repent, and reconcile with God and his church" is vital to our process of sanctification. This is "good" guilt.

But, as with almost everything good and useful for directing us toward God, the same guilty emotion can be distorted with the opposite end goal. Because it is the same emotion, it's sometimes difficult to determine if that guilt should be acted on or ignored.

What is this other form of guilt? It's the guilt caused by the pressures of the wide path paving the way to hell. It's the pressure to achieve worldly success over eternal success. It's the temptation to expend effort and resources toward personal self-glorification instead of glorifying our Lord. It's the effect of every direct and indirect teaching contrary to the path to heaven.

We live in a world with very different values than those of Christ. Those pressures - all of those distorted values - take a toll on the formation of a conscience. They cause guilty feelings when we don't achieve success. When we don't meet "our goals."

I don't think there is a strict sliding scale in the formation of a conscience from poorly formed to well formed. Rather, each individual has strengths and weaknesses - areas of God's teachings that come more easily, concupiscence to certain sins and not others, thorough study in one particular area, etc... And a tactic of the enemy may be to find those weak areas - the poorly catechized controversial issues, the propensities toward certain activities - and he finds a way to reform the conscience to slowly veer further and further away from the will of God. Once that area has been well-distorted, another can be attacked. So that "bad" guilt can even cause us to feel guilty about following God and His perfect plan for our lives.

Example - how many people use contraception because they truly believe it to be a moral good and would actually feel guilty if they stopped using it? Read this if you aren't sure on this one.  

My conscience has been in rehab the past few weeks. You see, I like to work. I find fulfillment in productivity. I have a tendency to always want to be working and I often feel guilty when I am not. I've struggled for years with being truly present and not getting lost in my thoughts of all the other things I think I should be doing instead of whatever it is that I'm actually doing at the moment. I differentiate here from multi-tasking; I'm simply examining the demeaning of one activity via obsession with what I "should" be doing. This has come up more and more lately with Clare, as I have to spend my time doing things that seem a "waste of all my talents and education and won't get any of my films made." Things like making goofy faces at Clare; singing phonics songs; packing her and her accessories up to go places like Mass; to the repetitive feedings, diaper changes, clothes washing, etc... It's easy to think these tasks unimportant.

Time is precious to me. I feel guilty when I waste it. But there is a difference in feeling guilty for wasting time doing something truly wasteful like spending the day watching TV versus spending the day obsessing over MY plan for the day and not accepting the plan that God has. I fall into this trap often. And since guilt isn't intended to be a good feeling, it pushes out the joy that I know God intends for me to have in the day He planned for me. Why do I let myself feel guilty doing what I know God wants me to do? That's just silly.

I know right now that my vocation is to be a wife and mother. For the time being, I also have an avocation to finish grad school and to make films that communicate God's point of view. If you look at my life objectively, examining the moments of my day, I think this is obvious. The majority of my day is spent with my husband and daughter, in communication with God, and then working on school and films. The things that are less important to me - a picture "perfect" house, money, well done hair and make up, etc... are neglected. But I was feeling more and more guilty about not focusing on the things that were missing - the things that I know, if I stop and think analytically - are unimportant but valued by our culture. Even feeling guilty about not spending time doing the good things that used to be part of God's plan for my life but I know are no longer on the forefront. Stuff like not being really involved in youth ministry, not taking a lot of classes in school, etc.

I started to realize why I wasn't able to be really present in my day-to-day activities through reading this book on motherhood. If you're a mom, I highly recommend it. Anyway, I realized that I was letting "time guilt" get to me and make me not just enjoy what I was doing when I was doing it - even when I knew I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing. Other than a short relapse yesterday morning of frustration when I spent hours trying to accomplish a simple task, I've really shifted my perspective the past week. I've already established that I really don't waste time - if I start to do that, then I should feel guilty. But I made a decision to not view activities as wasted time. This doesn't mean I've abandoned all goals. It does mean that when I do something, I want to do it and enjoy it and see the value in it! It means living in the present moment; living in the moment God has given me, not bemoaning the absence of the minute I think I want. When I actually do this - I really am joyful in an authentic way. Who doesn't want that?

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit' - you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears. Instead you should say, 'If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.'" - James 4: 13-15

As I wrote this, I realize that this has been quite a theme in my life and I have to get hit over the head with it every now and then. Here is a short film we made based on St. Faustina's poem about the present moment.