By Patrick Hardeman–In and Out of Darkness

Here’s a life preserver. Use it or don’t—but stop pretending you’re not in the water.

Guilt is strange.
You can’t see it. You can’t weigh it. And yet most people are walking around like they’re carrying a grand piano on their chest—insisting they’re “fine,” while breathing like they ran up six flights of stairs.

Almost everyone carries it.
Not because we’re evil.
But because we’re avoidant.

And avoidance, over time, gets heavy.

Not all guilt derives from what we’ve done. Many times it comes from what we didn’t do—the moment we noticed something was wrong, ran the mental math, and decided the cost of caring was too high.

We didn’t step in.
We didn’t speak up.
We didn’t want the inconvenience.

So we kept moving.
And the weight followed.

America—and much of the world—isn’t simply drowning in guilt. We’re treading water. Constant motion. No direction. Just enough effort to avoid sinking, not enough honesty to climb out.

Thankfully, we have distractions.
Endless ones.

We scroll past suffering like it’s a weather update. We comment, react, repost—and somehow feel absolved. As if witnessing pain counts as participating in its solution.

It doesn’t.

Here’s where the guilt tightens.

Most people have a line they would never want crossed for themselves—but have no problem watching it crossed for others.

You’d never want to be left vulnerable while people “assumed you’d be okay.”
Yet you’ve watched someone leave intoxicated and told yourself it wasn’t your place.

You’d never want your worst mistake to define your entire life.
Yet you’re comfortable reducing strangers to headlines and hashtags.

You want understanding for your stress, your trauma, your bad days.
But when someone else unravels, suddenly it’s “personal responsibility.”

That’s not morality.
That’s convenience.

We say we care about children—but only the well-behaved ones.
We say we support mental health—until it gets loud, messy, or expensive.
We say we value life—right up until it interferes with our comfort or routine.

And don’t worry—this isn’t about “other people.”
It’s about us.
That’s why it stings.

You know your health requires discipline. You’ve known for years. Still, you keep choosing what feels good now and resenting the consequences later—while asking for sympathy like the outcome was random.

That’s not self-care.
That’s self-sabotage with witnesses.

You’d never want your child harmed by someone who should’ve been stopped earlier.
Yet you excuse disturbing behavior because addressing it would require effort, humility, or professional help.

You’d never want corruption protecting harm—
unless it protects your job, your institution, or your sense of order.
Funny how morality gets flexible when it’s close to home.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Life isn’t as hard as people choose to make it for others.
We just call it “how things are” to avoid calling it what it is—a series of small moral shortcuts.

Now—pause here.
Actually pause.

If guilt were pointless, it wouldn’t exist.
It’s not punishment. It’s feedback.

Shame says, “You are broken.”
Guilt says, “You noticed something mattered.”

One paralyzes.
The other invites change.

That’s the life preserver.

So if this feels heavy, good. That means something in you is still awake. Still capable of caring beyond your own comfort.

And if this feels offensive?
Ask yourself why.

Because the world doesn’t need more outrage, more distraction, or more moral grandstanding. It needs fewer people willing to look away when it’s inconvenient.

Some of us still have a beating heart.
And some of us are finally listening to it—
even when it’s uncomfortable.

“This piece was written at the end of a chapter. The excitement of the page turning doesn’t come from what’s been read–but from what hasn’t yet been written.”

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