The grape does not distinguish between lands. Wine needs the creativity of the winemaker, and the designation of origin certifies it. It certifies its particular origin.

Human toxicity carries no such seal.

There is no such thing as “human toxicity syndrome.” It has no land, no era, no culture. Nor does it have a religion.

Each person is unique and free.

There are people who would never treat an enemy the way they treat themselves.

They demand the “impossible” of themselves and then become “unforgivable” in their own eyes.

They turn every mistake into a judgment.

And they mistake the rest they need for laziness.

We recognize toxicity when it comes from outside.

But when the voice that hurts us bears our own name, we fail to recognize it.

The same attitude with which I can humiliate someone can become, when I turn it toward myself, perfectionism.

The same anger I unleash on someone else can settle inside me and leave me unable to live in peace.

And perhaps we need to pause over the word toxicity.

Something toxic contaminates. So, we protect ourselves, set boundaries, and distance ourselves from people or behaviors.

But what happens when this word has come to overshadow the inner voice? That voice that never falls silent.

It does not speak to me of a “contaminating substance” that I carry inside.

It speaks of my freedom, my choices. Of the good I share or withhold.

And it asks me: What am I doing with the original goodness that has been entrusted to me?

Perhaps changing a word does not change reality. But it can change the question and the answer.

And that matters.

If I speak of contamination, I seek to cleanse.

If I speak of toxicity, I seek protection.

But if I speak of freedom, something more challenging emerges responsibility.

The Christian tradition gives a name to those inclinations that can distort our original goodness. St. Thomas Aquinas systematized them as seven fundamental wounds: pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth.

We do not have to share the Catholic faith to recognize ourselves in them. But neither do we need to erase their origins in order to recognize them as universal, revealed in each person in different ways and with different degrees of intensity.

Let us look at them in both directions.

Personal pride can humiliate another person, or demand of me a perfection that no one can attain “by force of gravity.”

Greed can consume me as I seek to accumulate wealth, but it can also convince me that resting is wasted time because it is not “productive.”

Anger can erupt against someone else or become a relentless (ruh-lent-luhs) inner voice that dwells on offenses, sometimes imaginary ones.

Gluttony can seek pleasure in food, but also in work, screens, or anything else that blurs the “original” goodness we carry within us.

Envy can make us look at what our neighbor has or endlessly compare ourselves with that version of ourselves that is not truly our own.

Sloth can cause us to disregard others or, more quietly, abandon ourselves.

And lust can reduce another person to an object, but it can also reduce me to an image, a body, a performance, a display.

And yet, this is not a diagnosis.

An inclination is not an identity.

A person is not a collection of predictable symptoms. Two people may share the same anger and experience it in completely different ways. Because between what we feel and what we do lies something no label can contain: our free will.

And here, the word “toxicity” once again creates confusion:

Contaminated soil cannot decide what to do with the contamination.

A person can.

No one chooses to wake up one morning filled with pride, anger, or envy. But there is a moment—sometimes small, almost imperceptible—when I can decide what to do with whatever has invaded my interior.

That is where my responsibility begins.

Not as a crushing sense of guilt, but as a personal response.

Being free does not mean having no inclinations. It means being able to respond to them.

The grape is a grape in any land. The wine we choose to make is something no one should choose for us.

And here we encounter another decisive contribution from St. Thomas: evil has no existence of its own; it is the privation of good. Evil is goodness that has been disordered, distorted, or deprived of its fullness. Like a shadow that calls out for the light.

We want to rest and end up abandoning ourselves.

We want to protect ourselves and end up locked away.

We want to be recognized and end up living for the approval of others.

We do not always have to tear everything out by the roots. Discerning what, how, and when becomes necessary.

We can polish the edges of our language and, at the same time, lose words capable of challenging us to ask about goodness, freedom, and responsibility.

It is not about reclaiming vocabulary, but the reality that word once protected.

Fabio Rosini, in The Art of Beginning Again, points to a simple yet demanding direction: when faced with reality, the only intelligent path is to welcome it.

Welcoming does not mean justifying.

Nor does it mean resignation.

It means beginning from where we are.

Perhaps beginning again consists precisely in this: daring to call things by their name without turning that name into our identity.

The person can turn the gaze inward; and if the person accepts the help of the One who is light and strength, the person emerges radiant and strengthened.