Good Life Guilt

People I know, and on occasion myself, seem to feel guilt at having lived good lives.  By this I mean a relatively easy life.  I have never known hunger in my life.  I have always had a roof over my head, and a nice roof too.  I have never not gotten anything I needed.  Please note I did not get a lot of things I wanted, but I was never denied anything I ever really needed.  I got a good education from the time I was a young child.  My parents, although somewhat distant, were involved in my life.  This involvement sometimes, and sometimes often, involved punishment of the physical kind, but I managed to come out of it relatively unscathed.  I was able to continue my education past college and into graduate school thanks to my parents and the U.S. Army.

I have friends who tell stories of their parents working their entire lives in steel mills in towns that where almost subsidiaries of the steel company.  My friend worked in the steel mill every Summer while he went to college at an Ivy League College and then went on to law school.  He had a different life than mine, but was probably even more successful for it.  He earned everything he ever got, nothing was given to him, whether it was something he want or needed.  I think he probably has a greater respect for material things than I do, in all honesty.

Good life guilt has lead me to spend the greater part of my life dedicated to being worthy of my good life.  I have been a public servant and public employee my entire adult life.  I have used the education, training and experience that has been given to me to make the world a better place for others.  My friend earned his good life having lived a hard one.  I, on the other hand, am working to be deserving of the good life I have had and have now.  I am not sure if there is a measure of who got the better deal, so to speak, but, in the end, I think that we are pretty well even.

One day I will retire, I hope, and I will be able to look back on my life and identify, with some particularity, persons that are better off for the fact that I am alive.  I will use this to justify my good life when the time comes for me to be judged.