Now my guilt is centered on my feeling of having too much.  I have a house worth something like $200,000 and three vehicles.  Other than utilities I have no payments.  Between Social Security and our state pensions, Nita and I have an income of about $75,000 a year.

I own more stuff than I need.  When I go to a store, I try be prudent, but I do not have to pinch pennies.  I suppose my  default is to save.  I have been poor during phases of my life and I have always been a person who refrained from gratuitous purchases.   I keep thinking I should buy a smartphone or a tablet because I think people are supposed to own those now.

Journalism is a pool I swim in.  I read it daily and like big national and international stories.  Last night as usual I watched the PBS Newshour.  Their stories take me places and I derive considerable satisfaction from traveling via reporting.  Last night I saw the second part of coverage of a refuge camp for refugees from Mogul, Iraq.  The reporter focused on children who were enjoying the novelty of playing and being able to go outside.  Some were drawing on paper for the first time in years.

They got into my head.  Why should the accidental circumstance of my birth in an affluent country give me such a tremendous advantage?  I am a mid-twentieth century born white person who was a child in the 1950s.  The world has always been my oyster.  I got farther than either of my parents in life.  Neither Harold nor Leona had a high school education.  I could have gone way further had I been more ambitious.  My public service side held my love of a big income in check.

As child I was separated from my father several times.  Those times were lean.  I was married at eighteen and lived with my in-laws for a while.  During my first few years of marriage, Nita and I truly counted every cent, but I have never know true poverty or hopelessness.  Why should I have so much?  I guess I expect struggle.  I suppose my immersion in the kind of journalism I get from The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Newshour, and The New York Times has widened my perspective so much that I am self-conscious about not having to struggle.

Once when I was visiting my Grandmother Irvin on Leheigh Lane in Altoona, I walked around the neighborhood, stopped at each mail box, and raised the flags.  Was I eight or nine?  My mail at 513 West Church Street, Saluda, SC, was left in a box attached to the house.  I did not understand that raising flags on mailboxes was a big deal.  For sure I got into deep trouble.  The scolding was unnecessary.  I felt terribly guilty.  I can’t laugh about it even now.  I should have known better.

When I was in high school, maybe the tenth grade, I joined a fund for struggling children in foreign countries.  I received a photo of my child and sent money every month.  The subscription was similar to my Book of the Month Club enrollment.  I received literature that reported progress.  I kept that up for several years.  Why?  Guilt, I suppose.

My second term paper at Saluda High School came during my junior year.  Its thesis was something like “Hawthorne’s personal sense of guilt is evident in “Young Goodman Brown”, The House of Seven Gables, and The Scarlet Letter.  Where did that come from?  I tried to follow certain autobiographical facts from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life as they related to themes and characters in his fiction.

I think that some humans are born with a strong sense of morality that attaches to guilt.  My mind runs to George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Major Barbara: both are clever studies on morality and social responsibility.  My years in Baptist Sunday School, Training Union, and Vacation Bible School come to mind.  Maybe my guilt is part of being born at the perfect time in the best country.  The serious idealism of the 1950s gave way to social activism as I grew into adulthood.  Ralph Nader and Martin Luther King were the heroes that replaced Johnny Unitas and Mickey Mantle as I hit puberty.

I suppose the cultural nuts and bolts of my guilt are derived from having lived through good times in a culture that seems to have affluence as its highest goal.  I think that the notion of being judged superior for having accumulated wealth is hollow.  Maybe my guilt is my curse of self-awareness in this new age of admiration of billionaires or maybe it is biological.  It unsettles me.