Guilty.

I have no idea where my guilt comes from, but it follows me into every area of my life. I remember it even when I was a kid. Global guilt. Global depression. As if I, even at ten, could have somehow prevented poverty and illness. As if I, single-handedly, could have righted the injustices of the world. And, rather than so doing, I played on monkey-bars and prayed for boys to notice me. As a result, children starved and were beaten and countries went to war. And there I was smiling heedlessly.

It's stupid and it's also crazy. I should have gotten over that sort of personal fable years ago, but it clings. I must be telling myself stories in bed at night.

I feel guilty when my students fail my class because they didn't do any of the work that I assigned to them.

I feel guilty when I send them to chill-out because they throw books at me or curse at me.

I feel guilty when I hear middle-class white folks who've never even seen a ghetto wonder why impoverished black folks don't just leave if it's so bad.

I feel guilty when I see rag-tag bands of black mothers and children and uncles and aunties in stained t-shirts and soaked jeans huddled together along the sides of dilapidated interstates, hungry and lacking even the roach-infested, drug-ridden, destitute shelter of the Magnolia projects.

I feel guilty when I hear white folks and black folks commiserate together about the problems presented by Mexicans taking jobs that don't even pay minimum wage.

There's nothing that I can do about these things. Technically, I bear no responsibility for any of them. And yet I feel responsible. I feel like I haven't done my job well enough, I've lacked guts or compassion or energy. I've been selfish or cruel or tight-lipped.

I just feel guilty about the state of the world. I feel guilty about the cruelty that we shower onto each other. I feel guilty that I can't be a Ghandi or a King or a Christ or a bodhisattva.