Guilt!

I’m excited about my high school reunion that starts tonight. I look good. Last night I sat in bed, going through my high school yearbooks, looking at the pictures, reading what people wrote to me when they signed inside. I have to say that I sure did have a lot of hair on my head back then. Jeez! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me to get a haircut? I had such an afro.

It was touching to read what people wrote to me. Things like “don’t worry so much” and “the people at UVA don’t know what they’re in for” and “I’m sure you’ll be a success at whatever you choose to do.”

Whatever I choose to do. God, things seemed so simple back then!

This morning I was reading an article in the New Yorker — unfortunately, it’s not on their website — about Bruce Pandolfini, a man who makes a living giving private chess lessons to gifted children. He was apparently the model for the teacher in the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer (which I haven’t seen). He’s lived in the same little one-room apartment in the East Village since 1976. Twenty-five years in one place! His stove is blocked by stacks and stacks of books and magazines and so on and so forth that reach three-quarters of the way to the ceiling. And he makes a very good living going from home to home, helping these child prodigies improve their chess.

I’m fascinated by the roads people take to get places, especially when they wind up doing something they love, and even more so when it’s not something that would show up on a career placement test. If Bruce Pandolfini had taken such a test, would it have told him that he should become a “private instructor of chess prodigies”?

Or look at Will Shortz, the New York Times’s crossword puzzle editor. Like me, he received a law degree from the University of Virginia. But instead of becoming a lawyer, he went to work for a puzzle magazine publisher. He even designed his own major as an undergrad at Indiana University; he is the only person in the world with a degree in enigmatology.

God, wouldn’t it be so nice to just blindly follow my interests and see where they lead me? But that’s so scary. I worry so much about coloring within the lines, and I worry about dying if I don’t.

Even debt makes me worry about dying. I have lots of debt right now — law school debt, and also credit card debt that seems only to be growing. But I desperately needed new pants, so last night I went to the Gap and bought a pair of jeans and two pairs of slacks. Charged $112 to my card. It was my first credit card charge in a month or so, but it still made me feel guilty.

Afterward I talked to a friend on the phone. “I feel like I should be punished for going into debt,” I said. “You are being punished,” he replied. “It’s called interest.”

True, true.

But I meant morally punished. Or mortally. I feel like my debt is going to make me die. I don’t know why I feel that way. But there’s got to be some incentive not to increase my debt, right? There’s always payback, right? Why not death?

I began law school with zero debt. I finished law school with thousands in loans, but no credit card debt. It was only about a year ago that I really started to carry a credit card balance.

I just want to be punished. Or I don’t want to be punished, but I fear I’ll be punished. Why, why, why? I’m torn between two philosophies — one is that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself and I should enjoy life as much as I can, and the other is that I need to be responsible and not do anything unhealthy such as carry debt. I always need some force to struggle against. I’m very good at creating obstacles for myself, real or imagined. Because without obstacles — well, what fun would success be?

Why do I feel like my imperfections are going to kill me when rationally I know they won’t? Maybe I want them to. Maybe I want to go through a purifying fire to kill off all my imperfections. Maybe that sometimes feels easier than having to deal with imperfections and shortcomings and shortfalls day after day.

Really, how do we cut ourselves so much slack and still feel able to live with ourselves?

What I mean is, how can you cut me so much slack and still like me? What have I done to deserve it, really? I wrote a couple of e-mails to Blogstalker the other day, trying to pep him up, and yet here I am feeling some similar feelings. The guilt I’m feeling right now at living in a too-expensive apartment and at carrying debt, the dissatisfaction with my neighborhood and with the fact that I haven’t eaten enough fruit lately, that I’ve been too lazy to go grocery shopping and so have been buying cheap dinners, the dissatisfaction with my job — why do I feel all this guilt?

I can understand feeling guilty about murdering a fellow human being or about cheating someone out of millions of dollars. But none of the things I’ve done have any negative impact on anyone else. So why the guilt?

Why do we feel guilty about things we shouldn’t feel guilty about?

Who appointed me moral exemplar? I never asked for this job!