On Guilt and Human Evolution

That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.
Kahlil Gibran

This new quote is a tough one. The language is a bit archaic and hard to interpret. I tried reading the Spanish translation (El extravío que aquí llamamos debilidad aparecerá mañana como un necesario eslabón para completar la cadena de la vida del hombre); reading it in the context of the English version, and consulting all my resources. This paraphrase is my interpretation of what I think KG would have said if he was speaking to today’s audience:

An action of mine that I describe in a negative fashion today may seem tomorrow to be an essential connection in the final development of humanity.

Whether this is an accurate rendering of Gibran’s thoughts or not, I believe I am beginning to make sense of it.

Last night we had a little family gathering at my place and my husband seemed uncharacteristically withdrawn, sullen, and depressed. We didn’t speak much, and when he left, I had this overwhelming sense of sadness and guilt that really caught me by surprise. It made all the joy I had been feeling lately evaporate.

All of a sudden, I had a name for my feelings: survivor’s guilt! It was a revelation to me and I decided to reflect on it a bit. It felt like my heart was rebuking me, “Who are you to be feeling happy and hopeful when your husband is in such distress? You are the one who’s caused this pain in his life. You should not have been so selfish!” I listened carefully to this inner dialogue and realized it was crazy talk. Yes, I had made the decision to move out of the house we shared, but it was not a decision I made lightly. It took me many decades to get to this point. I had to do it if I wanted not only to survive emotionally, spiritually, and even physically, but I needed distance from him and some privacy if I was to sort out my emotions, figure out how I had contributed to our mutual unhappiness, and thrive as a human being. I had made mistakes throughout the years, but the essential problem for me was my pain at his abandonment and his desire to have the problem go away by simply ignoring it. I had a right to be happy, but that didn’t mean that I was glad to see his pain. A sad and unfortunate situation indeed!

Tonight we had dinner together and it was very somber and subdued. At one point, he was very short with me and I asked him if he was angry at me, which he denied. All my usual defenses went immediately on alert. I desperately wanted to get away, but I hung in there. “We seem to be having a hard time knowing what to say to each other,” was my ice breaker. His answer was slow in coming and very quiet: “Yes.”

Gradually, we began to open up to each other and he shared some of his emotional struggles and how happy he was that he had decided to go to therapy. “I am tired of being unhappy,” he said. “I want to drop this burden of misery that I carry with me everywhere. Today a friend asked me if I was sick and I said no, but she insisted that she had known me for way too long and she could tell I was not doing well. I finally admitted to her what was going on.” For a good half hour or more, we shared our fears and hopes and agreed that this separation is a good thing if we want to be whole and contented ever again. We agreed we had a lot of work to do and that we loved each other and ourselves enough to allow ourselves to consider that it might even be a permanent rupture. It felt like we were making some solid progress on our journey to spiritual health and wholeness.

In the end, I realize now, what yesterday had seemed like a bad decision, a grave mistake, a lack of character on my part, now we both recognize as a necessary and essential step in our personal growth as individuals and as a couple. Perhaps that’s what KG was trying to say after all.