It isn't really a help to your happiness if you are walking around burdened with guilt, but it isn't simple enough to say that you shouldn't feel guilty. Why shouldn't you? Perhaps you are an utter shit who treats everyone with contempt and kicks her dog too.
On the other hand, people accumulate guilt for all kinds of circumstances that deserve different emotions.
People feel guilty because they watch a lot of TV, when they work hard all day and enjoy some TV in the evening.
People feel guilty because they don't fight cancer with a perky mental attitude, even though the only effective cures are drugs, radiation and knives, and the believers in fighting cancer curiously also go for help to doctors rather than motivation coaches.
People feel guilty because they are fat, even though they find simple happiness in pie and chips (I do, I do).
We need guilt, as it is our best ethical and moral barometer, but we should feel guilty when we have done something we reasonably believe to be bad, not because of something we are.
(unless what we are is a strutting Nazi-then we should be free to wallow in suicidal self disgust)
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