Functioning as a more or less independent and autonomous centre of consciousness, in effect as what's called an ego is to incur a kind of debt towards consciousness, from which you have borrowed the materials of a life. On a materialist view your temporary abrogation of the law of inertia is both a wonder and a violation of the way of things. This primal guilt for existence haunts the mind and needs to be resolved. This is the tragic view of life. It can be, but not through the satisfaction of ego drives.