The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Fighting with yourself

1) Guilt

We start this examination of internal struggles (And their negative side effects) with guilt, and, I think our old pal Negan is a good example of that.

You may think Negan a bad place to start, since he’s usually pretty cavalier about a lot of the things he does, but, boy, did he not enjoy being reminded of how long it took him to get rid of Alpha. He just was not a fan of it.

For a guy like Negan, who didn’t give a damn about most of the dudes he killed, his reaction to killing women and children was the complete opposite…he despised it, and so, to be responsible (Or, at least, think so) for deaths or near-deaths of so many of both was clearly not something he wanted. Why else would he have tried to convince Alpha to recruit the Hilltoppers instead of killing them? Why else would he get so bothered by people reminding him of how long he took to kill Alpha? Because, it reminded him of how many innocent people got hurt or even killed because of his slowness to act.

But, how does guilt affect you in a zombie apocalypse?

Well, we all screw things up at one point or another, and, feeling guilty about bad things that you’ve done is not only normal, it’s necessary — I’d hate to meet a person who does something wrong and never feels guilty about it.

That said, a zombie apocalypse is not a normal situation, and the things you may have to do to survive aren’t normal, either; If you sat there feeling guilty about all of them, you’d be wallowing in guilt all day! On top of that, even the things you should feel guilty about, there’s only so much you can do.

If you never, eventually, forgive yourself…you’ll never move forward. Yes, there’s some things that should rack you with guilt forever, but, unless you’re doing some downright evil stuff, you’re going to need to forgive yourself, eventually, or the guilt will just consume you, and maybe even drive you to take drastic steps to alleviate it…like feeding yourself to a zombie.