I’ve been staring at a blank screen trying to come up with something for today’s prompt and I’m coming up blank.
Scandalous…
The thing is, I’m in a good place right now, this second, this moment… even with the heartbreaking stories flooding the nightly news… the shootings in Isla Vista-across the street from the apartment my dad lived in when he went to UCSB. Clearly this struck him because he’s told us about this at least 3 times and even made me Google map the address so he could point it out. Then there was the loss a family near Lockhart suffered when their three year old drowned as a result of the torrential rains over the holiday weekend… and of course the passing of Maya Angelou.
The latter has me slightly more introspective than normal.
To deem something as scandalous would be to lay blame or judgement. Neither of which I choose to do. Not today. Not right now. I may get all judgey mcjudgerson tomorrow, but for today I want to simply sit in peace and reflect on something lighter…
Things that once were scandalous…
Like Ankles.
Victorian prudishness required that clothing cover the entire body – even a glimpse of the ankle was deemed scandalous.
and now…
We’ve come a long way….
Or not…
Fast forward a bit to the 1920s and women everywhere were abandoning their virtues and smoking, gambling, and probably nipping bootleg gin under the table! Heaven forbid.
In the 1950s, the word pregnant wasn’t to be allowed to be uttered on television in case it might offend someone… The I Love Lucy show changed that a bit with the arrival of little Ricky but the couple STILL didn’t share the same bed. That really didn’t happen much until the Munsters and Bewitched…
November 22, 1968 was a historic day in breaking down boundaries… with the first *gasp* interracial kiss on TV.
What’s my point? well, if I have one at all, it’s that scandal changes with the climate. It changes with our perceived moral high ground. It requires judgement and just like these examples, changes over time and understanding.
It is a PERCEIVED offense causing general public outrage.
What’s most interesting to me is to look in my own life at what once was scandalous – spoken of only in a whisper…or not at all. Divorce. Adultery. Self-loathing. Addiction. Depression. Things that once were so taboo that everyone I knew pretended they didn’t exist – at least not to people WE know… it was only through talking and opening up the conversation that I was able to find like minds and say “You too? I thought I was the only one!”
What I find myself saying to those who have wanted to dish dirt about friends, acquaintances, even strangers lately is simple.
I can’t truly know what they have gone through to lead them to this.
I can’t judge today. I can’t label anything as a scandal. I can’t even write something steamy in a work of fiction. Today I choose love. In all things and in all people.
I may have failed today’s assignment and I’m ok with that. Tomorrow is a new day.
“When you really know somebody you can’t hate them. Or maybe it’s just that you can’t really know them until you stop hating them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
Looking for the whole list of prompts? They are in text form and image so you can Come Play In May!
Even when you fail, you win. Always choose love.
Wow!!! Who’s the hot chic in the picture????
Shush. You’re married.
Oh damn….I forgot. (sigh). What are you…my conscience? 🙂
Always.