Is it caring or guilt?
Caring is a funny thing. I feel like I care a lot right now. Sometimes too much.At first when I think of "caring," I have the connotation of love and kindness. As a mom cares for her children or a doctor cares for the sick. But then I look it up in the dictionary, and the first definition is:
To care: "to feel trouble or anxiety"
Now that's a whole different denotation than what comes to mind when I think of the word. This reminds me of guilt. Another one of my bad (or good, depending on who's asking) traits. So let's look at guilt:
"feelings of culpability especially for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy"
This is pretty close to what I perceive as guilt - I feel guilty when I let people down, when I am not performing up to the standards I'm used to, etc.
While the actual definitions aren't exactly the same, MY perception of guilt and the definition of care are very similar! But in real life, these are presenting themselves in vastly different ways.
Case 1: Care. I care about V, and I can't stop it. There's no guilt whatsoever, but I'm happy when I'm with him and sad that we don't get much time together.
Case 2: Care and guilt. I care about my friends, and I feel guilty that I don't spend as much time with them as everyone else does. I don't like that I feel like I don't have time for lunch with everyone, and I sometimes treat my friends like V treats me, and neither of those are good. I only hope I can find the balance. Friends aren't supposed to be related to guilt, so something may be messed up in my head here.
Case 3: Guilt. It's true that I care about the people on my research project, but mostly guilt just weighs me down. Of course I want to put out a good product (for the team's and my sake), but I feel, right now, that this is more spurred on by guilt and not as much caring. This is a huge deviation from the norm for me, and I don't like it. But I feel so tired of the project being understaffed, that I just am ready to be done.
So I want to care for people and I want to lose this constant feeling of guilt.
As I've told Dan and Erika, my guilt button is super sensitive, so just be gentle.
posted by Biff @ 9:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home