Guilt as a Motivational Tool

I was trying to explain Jewish guilt to a friend who didn’t grow up around Jewish people. She understood guilt as a concept, but couldn’t understand why I’d embrace it as part of my cultural heritage.

I’m not saying I like the feeling. No one enjoys feeling guilty. I’m just saying it’s a useful tool and, when applied with precision, it can be used to achieve success.

Think, for a minute. What is guilt, exactly? It’s a feeling that you have disappointed someone—maybe even yourself—whose opinion you hold in high regard. People who don’t feel guilt are, to put it simply, sociopaths. They don’t care who they disappoint or let down. If you feel guilty, it’s because you care about doing the right thing. We can argue about what the right thing is, but that’s not the point here. Whatever you’ve decided the right thing is, if you don’t do it, you feel guilty.

Jews don’t believe in Hell. We believe in the World-to-Come, which is a not very well defined place that your soul goes after you die. We don’t think or talk about it much. Our concern is with the world we’re in. Our job is to make it a better place, to fix it as much as we can[1]. So, theologically, we don’t have the threat of punishment in the afterlife as an incentive to behave well in this life. What do we have instead?

The threat of our mothers’ disappointment. The overwhelming guilt that surges through us if we think we’ve let her down. Or might let her down.

She doesn’t even have to know about it. She might even be dead. It’s so ingrained in us, that the thought that she might be looking down from the World-to-Come and see our transgressions is enough to keep us on the straight and narrow.

I think my proudest parenting moment was when my son texted me and said, “Some people don’t hear their mother’s voice in their heads all the time and it shows.”

Y’all have fire and brimstone; we have a well-timed “Oy” from a disapproving yet loving voice. Same effect.

So I’m not trying to ‘get over’ the buckets of guilt poured on me from childhood on.  It’s not childhood trauma: something I need to recover from. It’s who I am, it’s what makes me me and keeps me on the straight and narrow.

And you’d better bet I’ve passed it on down the line.

[1] Maybe you’ve heard the phrase Tikkum Olum—that’s what this refers to.

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