Toxicity

You hear a lot about the word toxic these days. The word toxic can be traced back to the Greek word toxikón, meaning bow poison. So basically, like the word poison, it means harmful or dangerous. But I noticed one of the definitions included the word unpleasant. Well…I’ll get to that later.

When I click on the Explorer tab on my laptop, inevitably, there is an article with the word "toxic" in it. I remember when toxic referred to chemicals or poisons. I wish it would go back to that because I believe it is overused, if not misused, these days. Yes, there are toxic behaviors, absolutely, but I personally think labeling everything toxic oversimplifies mistakes and bad behavior, perhaps even diminishing the things that are truly toxic.

I also believe labeling a person demonizes them instead of an action or behavior. And since there has only been one perfect human, wouldn’t that mean we all have a bit of toxicity in us?

It is my firm belief that God made something beautiful and wonderful in every person. It is also my firm belief that since Eve and Adam tried to shortcut their relationship with God, every human makes similar attempts. In trying to heal wounds, fill chasms, or make ourselves happy, we can make choices that are not best for us and others. Sometimes those choices come naturally, almost instinctively. We are naturally selfish and proud, all of us.

I had a wonderful upbringing. Perfect? Not at all, but I never doubted my parents loved me or doubted their support for me, maybe not all my decisions, but ME. Yet even with this stellar upbringing, I can be selfish and proud. It is in all our nature as humans to have a perspective that benefits self, more than others.

These labels are thrown around so much, and labeling is never beneficial. In my way of thinking, the only truly toxic are things like murderers with no remorse etc. However, our society puts a label on a human then pretends they are blind to anything positive from that person. The problem with this is that if you practice this tradition across the board then there is no one positive…ever.

I do think there would be a proper way to use the word toxic. I think it could apply to willful acts that cause hurt, willfully closing your ears instead of listening. But let’s face it, we all have times we don’t listen to someone and that is especially hurtful to someone that loves you. Also, every person has times when we hurt someone, a bad day and we are cranky with the shop clerk or even with our own family. It causes hurt that we don’t think about later but the hurt person remembers. Are we to be called toxic when we do this? I don’t believe so.

Now, to a point I made in the first paragraph. In our world, we don’t like to be uncomfortable. Perhaps because our life is so very comfortable compared to other countries and other times, but we struggle with the sand in our shoes. Perhaps we should learn to turn the sand into a pearl instead of labeling it?

Perhaps we should have good conversations and forgiving hearts with those that love us but hurt us? Perhaps we should remember that we hurt them as well? Then we can be careful with the labels we throw around.