GUILT AND COURAGE
The one-caring is in a unique position with respect to the caring. I can be aware of myself caring, and I can think about and doubt my caring. If the cared-for receives my caring and completes it, I may never turn inward (except in wonder) to examine my own state or to question it. I care, and that means that my consciousness is turned to the cared-for. I have little need to reflect on this consciousness, and I may be but dimly aware of a euphoria, ranging from a mild “all’s well” to ecstasy, that accompanies my activity with the cared-for.
But if the cared-for does not complete my caring by receiving and acknowledging it, I may examine myself and ask, “Do I really care?” In some cases, an affirmative answer comes through clearly and honestly. I do care. I shall always care. The situation may be such that I just have to wait for my caring to be completed in the other and, if it never is, I see clearly that the attempt to care will nonetheless go on. This is a source of wonder when I see it. However, a negative answer may come through. If it does, I may accept it honestly and study it, or I may reject it in horror and begin to talk myself out of it. Let’s say that I have the courage to accept it. My caring for this other has turned into “cares and burdens.” When I see this, I know that I have become the object of my own “caring.” I need my pity, compassion, and sympathy. “Wallowing in self-pity” is not a bad thing if I intend to help myself as I would another. So, perhaps, I dwell on my troubles for a while, let them lead and chase themselves into an enhanced state of despair at which I draw back sheepishly and say, “Well, now, it is not that bad.” Then I can climb out. I recognize that I do not care at this time, that I am weary, but I recognize, also, that this mood may pass. It may be that I must still do certain things in behalf of the cared-for. I resolve to do them as though I care. This is very dangerous, and I must monitor the situation in a way that is completely unnecessary when I do care. I am not really prepared to care. I am in a deliberate state of neutrality, waiting and watching. I run a dreadful risk in this decision for, if the potential cared-for turns on me and says, “You don’t really care!” I may become stricken with guilt. I do not really care, and yet I “care” enough to be bothered by this accusation.
What I care about is crucial at this point. If I care about the other, if I am stricken by his belief that I do not care—that is, if I am stricken as he is by disappointment and desperation—then I do care, and things will mend naturally. But if this accusation strikes me as a threat, as a reprimand that triggers no sympathy for the other but only a massive resistance, I will feel guilt. Here am I, one who cared, who does not now care, and the other sees it. I can summon reason to my defense: Look at this other! What has he done to encourage or to appreciate me? What a mess he is. How I have tried. . . . I can go on and on and guilt comes right along like my shadow.
Can I avoid this? Can I be free of guilt? I do not think it is possible. Paul Tillich describes the anxiety of guilt as ontological. It transcends the subjective and objective. It is a constant threat in caring. In caring, I am turned both outward (toward the other) and inward (my engrossment may be reflected upon); when caring fails, I feel its loss. I want to care, but I do not. I feel that I ought to behave as though I care, but I do not want to do this. Of someone in this kind of situation, Tillich says:
A profound ambiguity between good and evil permeates everything he does, because it permeates his personal being as such. Non-being is mixed with being in his moral self-affirmation as it is in his spiritual and ontic self-affirmation. The awareness of this ambiguity is the feeling of guilt.3
Contrary to many of the messages from some schools of modern psychology, we cannot be free of this guilt. There is something to be said for “not wasting time on guilt,” if by this we mean suffering guilt and letting our guilt color all we do in the world. Clearly, if that which has induced guilt can be partially remedied by action, then it makes sense to act. This does not mean to avoid. We might, of course, refuse the guilt and engage in frenetic activity to avoid looking at it, but I am not suggesting this. I am saying what we all know, that some action which may remove the reason for the other’s accusation will tend to alleviate the guilt. In such cases we act out of regard for our own ethical or, perhaps, psychical selves, but the reaction of the other may enable us to recover the caring that has lapsed. Caring is, by its nature, filled out in the other.
There are, however, occasions upon which no action can relieve guilt. These are not necessarily situations in which caring has lapsed. There are situations in which caring is sustained but something has gone wrong. Something terrible has happened. In caring we risk guilt, either through accidents while caring is sustained or through the lapse of caring. In the former case, nothing can undo what has been done. Atonement is not required, because forgiveness was freely given at the outset. To be free of the guilt, the one-caring would do anything for the cared-for. Yet this “anything” would be a mockery, because there is nothing that could restore what has been lost to the cared-for. So here is this reality, this thing of which I can never be free. Courage requires that I accept it. I do not dwell on it so that it cripples me and provides an excuse (which I can never have) for my lapsed projects. But I accept it. When it comes to me I accept it as mine-that-I-would-not-have-chosen but mine nonetheless. I live it through as often as it comes to me. There is a double requirement of courage in caring: I must have the courage to accept that which I have had a hand in, and I must have the courage to go on caring. Might it not be easier to escape to the world of principles and abstractions? These cared-fors under whose gaze I fall—whose real eyes look into mine—are related to me. I can be hurt through them and by them. Intermittently, they are I and I they. The possibilities for both pain and joy are increased in my world, but I need courage to grasp the possibilities.
The question raised by mistaken psychologies, “Why should I feel guilty?” suggests that I may reject the possibility—and, of course, I may, if I am willing to reject my self, that part of my finite self which is embedded in an infinite that I cannot entirely grasp. But I do know, if I look with open eyes upon it, that any movement out of a stagnant self-as-it-is risks this guilt which is existential, which accompanies an awareness of lived experience. It is a risk I always run when I care.
The risk of guilt is present in all caring. But its likelihood is greater in caring that is sustained over time. Here we experience the “ups and downs” of close contact in normal living. Not all caring is sustained over lengthy periods. When we care for a stranger in immediate need, we care for the interval of need and, afterward, forget. A stranger needs to use our telephone, or we stop to help a stranded motorist. There is no demand in these cases that we care either intensely or for a prolonged period of time. There is a temporal aspect to caring. From the view of the one-caring, the engrossment characteristic of caring and the typical motivational shift must span the interval whether that be, properly, a few moments or a lifetime. Martin Buber says: “Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou:* in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling.”4 Caring, too, although it is not necessarily accompanied by love, is partly responsibility for the other—for