ONE DAY

The crowd at the Chinese New Year Bazaar - “It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude”

In Turin, Italy, an anonymous citizen wrote the tax office enclosing 10,000 Lira (four or five US dollars) and explained he had cheated on his income tax and it had caused him to lose his appetite. He added, "If my appetite doesn't improve I'll send the rest."

Guilt created a biological response in him. But it created an even more unusual response in one woman. William Wirt Winchester's widow built a bizarre mansion to assuage her guilt. It is a house built over a 38 year period at a cost of over five million dollars. The 160 room house has stairways that lead to blank walls, corridors that lead to unopenable doors, 13 bathrooms, 13 stair steps, 13 lights to a chandelier, 13 windows to a room.

Her husband was the son of the Winchester, heir of the manufacturer of the repeating rifle. Her house is referred to as the "guilt house," and was conceived as a never-ending building project to provide a home for the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles. Instead of confronting her guilt and working through it in constructive ways, her project occupied the rest of her life.

Erma Bombeck has called guilt "the gift that keeps on giving." And it is, if it isn't laid to rest. It can keep on giving emotional, physical and spiritual problems for a lifetime. But you needn't carry it around forever or find a bizarre way to assuage it.

Do you have unresolved guilt? I'm not talking about the kind of guilt that may keep one from breaking the law or hurting innocent people. I mean unnecessary guilt. Over-anxiety and self-loathing about that which can no longer be changed.

- In one day you can recognize where your feelings of guilt come from.
- In one day you can decide to make necessary amends to those you may have hurt.
- In one day you can decide to ask for forgiveness from others.
- In one day you can exercise your spiritual power and choose to be at one with God and the universe.
- In one day you can decide to be gentler with yourself and allow yourself to experience the healing balm of acceptance.
- In one day you can resolve to learn from the past and not repeat your behavior.
- In one day you can choose to do something constructive with that guilt, and then continue every day until it is only a memory.

And best of all, that one day can be today.

From Lifesupport.