David McElroy

If my parents had left me millions of dollars, I doubt I’d have overlooked it.

Instead, they left me something far more valuable — and I had overlooked that inheritance for most of my life. At least consciously.

My family was anything but a model of stability and mental health. My father suffered from what I now know was narcissistic personality disorder. My mother left us when I was 5 years old and drifted in and out of my life for years afterward. I’ve written extensively about both of those realities because they shaped me in profound ways — rarely for the better.

But life has a way of refusing to fit neatly into the categories we’d prefer. The same parents who left me with painful memories also left me with an inheritance that has quietly benefited me every day of my adult life.

Neither of them left me wealth. They left me something much harder to recognize because it became so completely woven into my daily life that I stopped noticing it.

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I was trying to write Monday evening when little gray paws appeared on the edge of my chair. Oliver was purring as he climbed onto the chair.

My MacBook was in my lap and I was hard at work. But Oliver started kneading his paws up and down on my belly as he tried to wedge himself into a space that was already full. He wanted attention.

And what was more important to me? Some work that could wait a few more minutes or some quality time with a purring cat who loves me?

I put the MacBook onto the nearby bed and let Oliver take over my lap. He draped himself over me and looked up expectantly. He wanted me to rub him and he made that clear. When I complied with his wishes, the purring got louder.

As I sat here letting a warm gray bundle of fur dictate my schedule for a few minutes, it occurred to me that this wasn’t the most efficient use of my time — but it was important to both of us in ways that are hard to explain.

We spend so much of our lives asking whether something is productive that we sometimes forget to ask whether it’s meaningful.

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How long can a human being stew in a cesspool of hatred and anger and meanness before he’s permanently changed? How long until he’s so full of bitterness that there’s no love left in his heart?

We’re seeing that happen in real time in our society right now. Different people are responding in very different ways. Some good people are becoming so bitter and angry that they can focus on almost nothing so much as hurting the people they see as the enemy. Some people who were already angry and unloving are now so full of hatred that they spew bitter vitriol constantly.

And some are so horrified to find themselves in this cesspool that they’re almost despondent about what they’re experiencing.

I’ve been trying for years now to process what I’ve been feeling about the toxic online culture that we’ve created for ourselves. I’ve gone back and forth about what to do about it, but I haven’t really done much about it. I’ve been left ambivalent, because I can’t live with what I experience here — but I’ve found it impossible to truly pull away from it.

Whatever this thing has become, I can’t escape blame. I want to point fingers. I want to say, “Look at what you’ve done!” But in my heart, I know I’ve been a part of it, too. I’m to blame.

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