Your Behavior is Bad and You Should Feel Bad
Cue Zoidberg
Remorse is the pain of sin.
Allow me to preface this piece with a poem. This poem was written on and about the circumstances that led to this piece. Or, rather, the feelings that struck me the first time I dropped off my boy and every time since.
I love intensely and hurt inevitably. Though it may be more akin to “I love intensely, and the pain follows me just as fiercely.”
Which at one point I saw as… romantic. Then, at another point I saw it as a flaw.
Now I see it for what it is, at least at present. A feature and a signal.
The pain, the hurt, the unpleasantness is not inherently bad nor is it some sacrifice I am making for love. At least that isn’t its essence.
A simple signal. Something must be addressed before moving forward to prevent more hurt.
Take this essay personally. That’s the intent. I’m talking to myself the whole way through. It’s personal.
Feel attacked. Be hurt.
The sharp sting of guilt is not meant to wound us—it is meant to wake us.
Find the signal.
Father’s Litany
-
I miss you, my boy—my compass, my star,
the soft pulse of my heart’s forgotten hymn.
Every morning I watch you walk,
feet unsure yet steady,
a small miracle breaking from the warmth of the truck.
Your face, half-curious, half-brave,
adjusting to the burden of a new day.
-
I watch you still, as I always will—
a sentinel at the gates of your growing,
grieving and exalting
the boy you are,
the man you will be.
-
At six, the world still bends to you.
The doors you step through
are lined with possibility,
and I, tethered to the weight of your becoming,
replay the moments where I faltered—
words too sharp, silence too long,
my failings like stray threads
woven into your small hands.
-
Oh, my boy, my buddy, my cool big kid—
forgive me.
Forgive the ghost of my anger,
the shadow of my impatience.
How I long to undo
every moment that might have made you doubt
the sacred truth of my love.
It is endless, it is ferocious.
-
Still, I am human,
and there are cracks in this clay.
But grace, perhaps, is in the mending,
and I will work until my hands are raw,
until the cracks glow gold with apology,
with change,
with love unspent.
-
I see the world in your face,
the universe reflected in your eyes.
Do you know what you are?
You are my cathedral,
my proof of beauty,
my proof of God.
-
And when I drive away, leaving you to the tides of the day,
I tremble.
I ache.
I am undone by the awe of your being.
In you, I see the future, radiant and vast.
I see wonder—boundless, untamed.
I see the beauty I could never deserve.
Yet you are mine,
Thus I must strive to.
-
And so I will keep trying, my boy.
I will love you louder than my failures.
I will be the weight beneath your wings,
so when you rise, you will remember:
the world is yours to shape,
and I will always be there,
watching.
The Beauty and Necessity of Feeling Bad for Bad Actions
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
The soul’s capacity to feel bad for what it has done wrong is not its weakness—it is its proof of life. The fragile threads that bind us to one another are not sustained by perfection but by accountability, by the trembling acknowledgment of our own inadequacies.
Guilt, shame, and sorrow—those painful intimations of the heart—are not the adversaries we imagine them to be. They are harbingers of truth, beacons that illuminate the places where we have strayed. To feel bad when we have done bad is not a punishment; it is a grace.
Consider a father who watches his child step into the light of a new day. The boy’s small steps on the schoolyard pavement echo like thunder in the man’s heart. Each stride, unsure yet determined, is a testament to the boy’s fragile courage.
Yet, as the father drives away, an unseen storm brews within. He sees the child’s growth—each step forward, steady and determined—but in the reflection of the rearview mirror, he also sees his own failings. The mistakes linger, shadowing the moment, their weight impossible to ignore.
Words spoken in anger that could never be unsaid. A fleeting look of impatience that became a chasm of misunderstanding. The father knows he is human, fallible. But the ache in his chest—the ache of knowing he has hurt the one he loves most—is not a thing to escape. It is a thing to embrace. For that ache is the price of love.
How could he claim to love, truly and deeply, if he were unwilling to bear the burden of the harm he has caused?
To love deeply is to be wounded deeply, for love makes us custodians of one another’s souls. This is the paradox: to love is to bear the weight of another’s pain as well as one’s own.
Failure in this duty is inevitable; it is part of being human. Yet the pangs of guilt that follow are not chains to shackle us but signals—sharp and unyielding—that point us back toward redemption.
The father who feels this ache does not dwell in despair; he dwells in purpose. Each mistake becomes a lesson, each regret a vow to do better. The tragedy lies not in feeling bad but in failing to feel it. To dismiss that sorrow would be to sever the very root of his humanity.
Remorse doesn’t invade the soul; it belongs there. It strikes like a hammer, forcing us to confront what we’ve done and pushing us toward what we’re meant to become. Yet, in the world we inhabit, there is a creeping resistance to these sacred emotions.
Guilt is cast as weakness, shame as a relic of a judgmental past. We are told to cast off these weights, to liberate ourselves from their oppressive grasp. But liberation, in this sense, is a lie. A society without guilt is a society without conscience. A person who does not feel bad for their wrongs is a person who will repeat them.
Imagine a young man who, in a fit of arrogance, speaks cruelly to his aging mother. The words, sharp and unthinking, cut deep into the woman’s tender heart. She says nothing, only turns her face to the window, her silence louder than any reproach.
Days later, the young man learns that his mother has fallen ill. Her frailty, once an abstraction, becomes painfully real. He remembers his words—not just the sound of them but the way her shoulders sagged beneath their weight. His guilt is a fire in his chest, consuming him.
But it is also a light, guiding him to her bedside, where he holds her hand and whispers apologies through his tears. Without that guilt, he might have continued on his way, blind to the harm he had caused. Without that shame, he might never have sought to make amends.
There is no higher grace than the courage to face oneself and tremble under the weight of what could have been done differently. These emotions—though they pierce us—are the means by which we repair what we have broken. They compel us to turn back, to retrace our steps, and to sow seeds of healing where we once wrought harm. To dismiss them as unnecessary or cruel is to rob ourselves of the chance to become better.
Take, for example, the chilling case of a child who grows up without ever being told, “This is wrong.” He steals from his classmate, and the adults shrug, saying, “Boys will be boys.” He lies to his parents, and they laugh it off, saying, “It’s just a phase.”
Each transgression is met not with correction but with indifference, and so the child grows into a man who cannot distinguish right from wrong. He becomes a man who lies without remorse, who cheats without hesitation, who hurts without care. The absence of guilt does not make him free; it makes him dangerous.
If we lose the ability to feel guilt, how can we ever hope to recognize the line between who we are and who we could become?
In the ruins of our failures lies the blueprint of what we might yet build, if only we dare to feel the pain of their collapse. Thus, we must also confront the illusion that our bad actions are inevitable, that we are powerless to resist them.
How often do we hear the excuse, “I couldn’t help myself”? It is a grotesque untruth, a way of absolving ourselves without confronting the reality of our choices. Self-control is not easy—it is a battle waged daily against our baser instincts—but it is possible. To deny this is to deny our agency, to surrender to the whims of impulse.
Even the most painful emotions have their purpose.
Regret claws at the soul, forcing us to revisit our wrongs and reckon with their cost. Guilt, sharp and unrelenting, compels us to confront the pain we have caused and to seek amends.
Shame, like a shadow at dusk, stretches long across the terrain of the heart, reminding us of the light we have momentarily eclipsed. Anguish, though searing, is the fire through which we burn away complacency and awaken to our responsibilities.
These shadows—the shadows cast by love and conscience—are not burdens to be discarded but gifts to be honored. Without them, we would be adrift, unmoored from the very things that give life meaning.
If we reject the weight of these emotions, how can we ever hope to take responsibility for the harm we cause?
To feel bad is not to wallow in misery. It is to take responsibility. It is to say, “I have done wrong, and I must make it right.” This is the essence of humanity: not perfection, but the capacity to recognize our flaws and to strive, however imperfectly, toward goodness.
When we numb ourselves to shame, we numb ourselves to growth; when we silence guilt, we silence our better angels. The ache of remorse is not a curse but a testimony to the beauty of our capacity to love and to harm. To feel bad is to care. To care is to be alive.
And so, the father who aches with regret, the son who weeps at his mother’s bedside, the man who wrestles with his conscience, and the woman who carries the silent weight of her mistakes—they are not weak. They are strong, for they have faced the truth of their own fallibility. They are alive, for they have allowed their hearts to break and to be remade.
Every tear shed in remorse waters the roots of change, for sorrow is the soil from which goodness blooms anew. To feel bad for doing bad is not a curse. It is a blessing. It is the call of the soul to rise, to mend, to become more than we were. And in answering that call, we do not merely endure the pain; we are transformed by it.
In the end, it is not our mistakes that define us, but what we do with them. To feel bad is the beginning of redemption, and redemption is the proof of grace.
But feeling bad alone is not enough. The weight of remorse, no matter how profound, cannot mend what remains broken unless it is paired with action.
To sit with regret and do nothing is to allow the harm to fester, to let the echoes of our mistakes reverberate unchecked through the lives we have touched. Sorrow may open the door to redemption, but it is through action that we walk through it.
Consider the father who sees his failings in the rearview mirror of memory. His guilt is necessary, yes, but it is not sufficient. If he does not kneel to his child, admit his wrongs, and strive to do better, the ache in his chest will become a stagnant weight, dragging him deeper into despair without ever healing the bond he has damaged. Or the son at his mother’s bedside—what use is his guilt if he holds her hand in silence yet fails to speak the words she needs to hear?
Guilt, shame, regret—they are guides, not destinations. They point us toward the work that must be done, but they do not do the work for us. To feel the sting of conscience and remain still is to waste its purpose. It is not enough to know you were wrong; you must seek to make it right. Apologies must be spoken. Trust must be rebuilt. Actions must change.
Holding on to the emotion without addressing its cause is a form of cowardice, a refusal to engage with the difficult yet necessary labor of repair. It allows the wound to remain open, untreated, and in doing so, it multiplies the harm.
For true redemption, there must be both acknowledgment and amends—a willingness to confront the pain we have caused and to work, however imperfectly, toward healing.
The proof of grace lies not merely in the feeling of remorse but in what we do with it. It is in the father who, despite his failings, learns to be patient. It is in the son who speaks his apology, even through tears. It is in the woman who carries her guilt yet chooses to build something better in its wake. This is what it means to rise, to mend, to transform.
To feel bad is the beginning, but to act is the fulfillment. In action, sorrow is transfigured into redemption, and redemption into proof that we are capable of becoming more than our worst mistakes. This is not weakness. This is strength. This is grace in motion.
Love,
Dad
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Beautiful. As a Dad of four grown (20's) kids - boys and girls, I concur with all of this.
As mom of grown sons I can, as probably every parent can, relate to this. This is so beautifully written. I pray that I never miss or ignore the signals.