Carefree and Guiltfree

(This is a sequel to the last post. Do read it before going on with this one.)

I have hurt people before. I have inflicted pain upon good spirits that deserve none of what I have done to them. I have said and done things that became the arrows of an evil Legolas and struck people whom I loved. I have also done nothing at times when I should be doing something which sent more arrows of sorrow, arrows of despair flying everywhere, hurting the innocent who were close to me. The worst of all was that, I hurt people simply because I acted like myself. Just a few days ago, I found out that I did it again to a friend whom I got close to recently. Just a few days ago, I found out again when I received a letter from a family member saying that I wasn't spending time with her sincerely the last time I was home.

In most fantasy Role Playing Games, there is always a particular spell that causes damage to a character when that character damages someone else. It real life, I believe that spell is known as guilt. I learned from several books that every emotion we feel has a purpose. For a while, I wondered what guilt is for. The answer was simple: We feel guilt after we realise that some action performed by us before is wrong. Although "wrong" is a very relative term, we feel guilty probably to deter us from repeating that "wrong" action. So it can be said that guilt is there to refine our behaviour.

For me, and probably for many other people, one of the many actions that I consider "wrong" would be to emotionally hurt people by acting in a careless or selfish manner. So realising that we've hurt someone emotionally after we have done it would probably cause us to feel guilty. After feeling guilty, we would take precautions not to perform the same crime to avoid hurting the feelings of others, because in effect, it makes us avoid feeling guilty. This is how guilt refines our behaviour. More than a week ago, I believed in being brutally honest with people as I believed that would make them realise their flaws and rectify their character. That was before I hurt someone by being brutally honest, which aggravated the situation. I felt guilty, and decided that I should not always be brutally honest. Because many of us want to avoid the pain of guilt, many of us go to great lengths to refine our own character. People such as myself like receiving criticisms on my character because this way, I can refine myself before I do something to make myself feel guilty or any other painful emotion.

By now, the paradox that I mentioned in my last post should be obvious. In life, we should not fall in the trap of worrying about what other people feel about us, yet we must always consider what effects our actions will have on people's feelings. To me, this is one of the toughest balance to achieve. To embrace this paradox, we must take great pains just to figure out whose feelings should not be hurt, to what extent can we disturb people's emotions, so on and so forth. Yes, it does take a hell lot of effort, but hey, it's worth it! Right now, I can be as cool as Samuel L. Jackson, and be as sensitive as the Fab Five!