Читать книгу What Makes Women Happy - Fay Weldon - Страница 11

Guilt also stands between you and enjoyment. It’s an offshoot of anxiety.

‘Shouldn’t have done this, shouldn’t have done that. Shouldn’t have had a one-night stand. Shouldn’t have eaten a bar of chocolate…’

It too is instinctive, hardwired in. It applies itself to any number of situations. When we succumb to ‘inappropriate’ sexual desire, eat the forbidden chocolate – anything that makes us feel bad – that’s when the instinctive self, determined to satisfy its appetites, is in conflict with the socialized self.

‘Ought not to endanger my relationship. Ought to lose weight.’

Feel it in its purest form when you neglect your children: ‘Three in the morning, the baby’s crying, but I’m too tired to bother.’ Baby wins: eventually you stir yourself, get out of bed and see to it. Thus Mother Nature, that unseeing, unthinking, callous creature, ensures the continuation of the race.

Whether or not you have children, the capacity to feel guilt is there. Stronger in some than in others. Certainly stronger in women than in men.

She: ‘We need to get back, darling. The babysitter’s waiting up.’

He: ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. What do we pay her for?’

Guilt is society’s safeguard. If you don’t feel guilt at all they declare you’re a psychopath and lock you up, and quite right too.

Let me add to that – just to counter the effect of so much Darwinian reductionism, which is true enough but there are other truths as well, namely that we have a spiritual life – that guilt is the soul’s safeguard. And if the soul is safeguarded, we start from a higher level of life content than we would otherwise do. If you are good – abstain from bitchiness, doing others down, malice and complaint – people like you. If you are liked, you tend to have a good life.

Be good and you’ll be happy. Be happy and you’ll be good and go to heaven.

As a corollary, if you don’t respond to the promptings of guilt, you might very well go to hell – in other words, fall into a depression, get ill and end up with no friends.