I remember walking in the streets of Esfahan in Iran as a young girl and feeling uncomfortable, like I've done something wrong. I asked myself why do I feel like this? and it was clear that my crime was being a woman and existing in a muslim society dominated by men. I couldn't change that, I couldn't not be or not be a woman. I was there, I am here, I exist and I liked to continue existing.
It is probably one of my earliest memories of me not being able to make sense of a human-made structure.
I've been living in Germany for 34 months now. It is generally a healthy society and it doesn't make me feel guilty before committing a crime, except for the times that people get disappointed when I say I am Iranian, which doesn't bother me that much anymore.
Today, that memory came back because of this retreat that I am invited to attend with the people who harmed me; and I found myself overexplaining and trying to justify my urge to decline it. It made me to revisit that memory and try to understand myself better. Was that really guilt or something else?
Guilt is the result of a wrong doing. It contains an action and it puts you in the control sit; you do something wrong and as a result you feel guilty. Anything produced by an action, could have a counteraction, something to fix. I am responsible, therefore, I am not helpless or powerless.
But here is the harsh truth: sometimes it is just an irrational behavior by the environment and there is no rational way to respond to it, no matter how hard you try. Sometimes the environment makes you ashamed of things that are not under your control, things that have no exit, and your system doesn't know what to do with them, so it just feels ashamed. Shame is a no-ending loop, a behavioral control mechansim produced by society, to restrain you from doing anything that could potentially be flagged by authorities. You are stopped by yourself way before you can even reach the growth point. They have other plans for you, to keep you dumb and a working class individual who probably will provide the society with money and new blood. That is the role you are allowed to take and shame keeps you in that exact line. Do you accept that role? I don't.
Think about this every time you were made to feel ashamed by a human mistake, think about it every time you made uncomfortable for something you haven't done, every time you tried to soften a mistreatment and every time you tried to call it guilt instead of shame to make it less painful.
Think about it every time and act differently.