Just Another Stripe in the Rainbow

My size is forever-shifting from miniscule to extraordinary. I am mute, yet you hear me in your every thought. If you let me control your life, you will never know happiness. What am I?

Answer: Guilt. A five letter word with such an influential impact on our lives that each letter carries significant weight.  Guilt knaws at the innermost core of our beings. It is a chain around our limbs, with the other end tied to the memory of its origin. It is the sinking stomach sensation on a roller coaster.

You may choose to ignore it.
Or you may choose to spill every bit of your mind onto the cold, linolium floor at your feet, hoping that by expunging every screaming thought in your head, the origin of your guilt that has been suppressed for so long flows out amongst the rest. Once it leaves your stomach, passes your chest, and drains from your mind, you feel free. By splitting the experience among others, the guilt shrinks from extraordinary back to miniscule. And once again, you feel light. You could float. You are a cloud.

Clouds have no feelings, after all.
It would be nice to be a cloud.
I would like to be a cloud.
Birds could pass right through you. Birds with piercing beaks. It would never phase you. Never weigh you down.
Because you are a cloud.
Clouds have no feelings, after all.

But by being a cloud you could never experience the good feelings either. This is the heart of the human experience. Happiness and joy and surprise and peace.

Let's not be clouds.
Let's be dimensional personalities with great capacity to experience emotions.

You can think of guilt as a negative sensation that blankets your every mood. Or you can see it as just another stripe in the rainbow of human emotions. But when it comes down to it, to get from color to color, one must blend into the varying hues in between.

Blend on, folks.