Guilt.

What exactly is guilt and why does it exist?

Was it supposed to act as classical conditioning? To feed us with the schema, that what we just went through before experiencing the immense (or not) guilt, is bad, and should not be done in the future?

Because if that's the whole idea of guilt, than I hate to say it, but that system has most definitely failed, like most systems. But the sad thing is, that system wasn't man made.

And if that's not the idea of guilt, which I would really really like to believe with immense faith, than I'll just consider myself unknowing to the ways in which all these feelings have been programmed into us. That's the million dollar question, isn't it? Even if everyone's gradually but surely ceasing to ask it. Just like, why do we exist? Only more elaborate. Why do we feel guilty?

Because let's face it. Guilt isn't stopping us from doing anything, except feeling guilty in the future itself. A serial killer might feel guilt for the first couple of victims, but then it just becomes the norm, doesn't it? Where's the guilt then? Guilt acts as an entity that just clears itself out. Like a virus that just feeds on itself until it ceases to exist.

At least that's my understanding of it, till this point. What has guilt ever stopped us from doing, other than feeling guilty in the future? Anyone?

I had told myself
this was never to be done again
but as fate had decided
here I find myself today

I had thought this wouldn't happen
and it wouldn't come to this again
but our thoughts although our own
their ends we just can't say

Why does it always lead to this, I might ask
but only to find the same answer again
I didn't think it would matter that much
since everyone's so busy in their own guilty way.

- Danish Arif.