Today in history: One year and three-months after my first birthday, the now-former Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb in a test. It was more portable and 30-times more powerful than the U.S. bomb it followed. The Soviet bomb was called the "Layer Cake Bomb" because its components were layers of hydrogen and an isotope of the same element.
Too often people give felicitous names to engines of death and destruction. We often consider our own injurious behavior as anything but that. Given time and an honest consideration of the feelings we name remorse and realistic guilt we realize the gravity of what we may have done.
Popular pschology often belittles both remorse and guilt, which flow from what I did or left undone (hence, realistic). In fact, they are baromoters of healthy personal development and healthy, inspirited living.
A synonym for inspirited is enthusiasm. We use enthusiasm to mean strong feeling. Our connotation of the word hides its original meaning. Its root is from the Greek, to have God within.
My reminder for today is what I often remind myself when I feel remorse:
Don't get down if you feel remorse. Feeling it is a clue that God-within is helping us to orient our lives anew and enjoy a layer of reconciliation, which always gives birth to life. Reconciliation in relationships does not deny what happened; rather, it allows us to live in new, enriched and healthier ways in the future.
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