When your child purposefully trips an opponent during a soccer game, or fails to pass to an open teammate with a great opportunity to score, you frown. You feel shame, as you should, because you are witnessing the betrayal of someone you love, by someone you love—and that is your child’s self-betrayal. Something similar occurs when you violate your own sense of propriety. It is the same instinct, and it is best attended to. If you do not follow the right path, you will wander off a cliff and suffer miserably—and there is simply no way that the most profound parts of yourself are going to allow
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