Guilty As Charged

Guilt is an interesting phenomenon. A detective came to speak to my Criminal Procedure class the other day and theorized that everyone has a conscience and wants to come clean. You just need to give them the time to admit their wrongdoing.

Unless you are completely insane and have no concept of wrongdoing, I think that this is true for the most part. However, I think that the amount of time for self-admonishment varies from person to person.

For instance, I am pretty much always feeling guilty about something. It’s a constant state of mind for me. I feel guilty for:

· eating those Girl Scout Cookies instead of the healthy fruit salad

· sleeping in instead of running those two miles

· reading Vogue instead of plodding through my Patent Law treatise

· not spending enough time with friends, but when I’m with them, I feel guilty for not being more studious

· the fact that my roommate has to do the majority of cleaning around the apartment because I am spending 12+ hours a day at school/work

· because I am out of touch with my family and rarely visit

Therefore, my life is a constant balancing act, in trying to accommodate all these areas of my life. These thoughts are persistently going through my mind at all hours of the day, and I am usually trying to solve the dilemma before it even begins. I cannot even imagine what my conscious would do if I did something major like rob or murder someone. I think that I would have to confess right away. If I am anxious over five Thin Mint cookies, I know that I could not even live with myself if I did something terrible like that.

So how is it that someone can go for years and not confess to a crime they committed? I just do not understand. I hypothesize that we have different time lines of guilt-induced anxiety. Mine is pretty much immediate, given my continuous state of anxiety. However, other people do not face their actions/responsibilities until much, much later. Why is that? Is it pure selfishness because it ultimately affected some other part of their life? Is it a severe case of delusional grandeur? Maybe they just do not care…which is both sad and very scary.

Well, at least now I don’t have to feel guilty about not posting a blog entry. Hmmm…I should really be getting back to disclosure requirements of patent law…**sigh**