Repay My Parents Sacrifices Quotes

Time was when a parent had the right to offer a child's life to the gods; to sell the child into captivity; to live by a child's sweat; to do all but cook and eat a child. But long after such visible exploitation was put beyond the pale, an invisible exploitation went on unchallenged, since[sic], owing its existence to its[sic] parents, the child was held to be indentured to them for an advance of sacrifices so great that a lifetime of service could scarcely hope to repay it[sic]. This was not called exploitation; it went by the name of love. Even in your time, when it began to be the vogue to set the young free, parental authority was still equated with parental love by all but the few poets and dissecters[sic] of the psyche who voiced their doubts. Like patriotism, parental love was considered sacred. But[...] the pendulum had swung, as pendulums do, completely the other way. In my time,[...] all other forms of love[...] had come overnight to be accepted[.] [...] [W]hat else is love itself but awareness at its highest pitch?

My parents lost their lives out of love for me. Losing mine for no good reason would be a terrible way to repay them for that sacrifice, no matter what I've done.

I have always felt as though I have something to prove: I have to do more, be better, to make other people's gifts and offerings worthwhile; to earn their care or justify their faith. I spent years trying to live up to the enable sacrifice I believed my birth parents had made, while also trying to be good enough for other people to love. I am still living as if the choices made by others - from my first parents giving me up, to my adoptive parents loving me and then letting me leave - are debts I have to repay, marks in a ledger I can never hope to expunge.