Daily Prompt: Toxic
This American Life, a radio magazine, broadcast an older show (Episode 289) from their archives about adult children confronting their parents with their sins, oversights, weaknesses, etc. The moderator noted that often the offspring find that they can bring expression of sorrow or remorse, but not explanation.
Struggling with my offsprings’ accusations, I see that there is not a total lack of foundation for criticism, but the new generation is judging by the standards of the new generation, which in part were brought about by the values the old generation espoused and worked for.
There is usually no practical manner to bridge the gap.
But this begs the question of what exactly is a value. We don’t often realize that we hold something as a value only when we feel it is insufficiently present in the world. Although I suppose conservatives believe that the things they value have been established fact for generations, if not millennia.
But there are always underlying conditions that work to make living in the valued way a challenge.
If that weren’t true, we wouldn’t think about it as a value, as something valued.
Values remain values until the world changes, and then they become the new baseline.
For example, most human beings in Western culture think slavery is wrong. Most of us who have learned about new forms of slavery have been appalled. We had thought that battle had already been won.
Anyway, my past failures can never be made up for. I am toxic until and unless I am able to weave a new life, always under the anxiety of a new release of the poison.
