Gifts come in all kinds of wrappings

Carmelene Melanie Siani

Maybe guilt isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it’s a gift — if you will — pointing at something you once did that, in fact, you should have done differently.

Maybe at the time it was the only thing you could have done. You weren’t old enough to know better. You weren’t wise enough to know better. You were too involved in other things — yourself, for example. Maybe you have felt guilty all your life, every time it comes to mind.

Maybe now you are old enough to unwrap the gift, look inside the box in which you’ve tried to hide that thing you did and examine it. Maybe if you take it out and hold it up to the light of day today, this very day, you can admit to yourself that in fact, you might have, could have, should have, done things differently.

And maybe today, you can begin to change all that.

We cannot begin to repair what we have broken until we admit we broke it in the first place.