Why Does My Past Still Control Me? with Paul Drugan

Because, you know, listening to your story, you know, you can't help but think that you'd be angry and uh especially if he's gone and died you know you can't get your your your retro there's no retribution um how do you go from that and you know obviously all the the behavior you had in life as a direct result how do you go from that to to finding forgiveness

so that's uh that's a very very good question and and it's it's really defined my work in terms of writing and what I plan to, you know, what I plan to continue doing and why this is so important for, you know, boys and men to, you know, why I think this is so important is because everybody, to me, everybody has this misguided definition of forgiveness, which is what to everybody? It's absolution.

It's forgiveness.

It's, you know, it's, it's saying to the person who did you wrong, that's okay.

You know, everything's fine.

You know, I absolve you of your crime or your sin or whatever you want to call it.

And that's not what it is.

To me, it's not what it is.

You know, me, in my experience, it was, you know, more of that person who did or who does you wrong puts a hook in you.

And that hook doesn't go away after the person dies or moves away or whatever.

It stays with you and it manifests itself in many different ways.

And one of them is anger that you see a lot in young adult men.

Um, it's a rage, it's addiction, it's failed relationships.

It's all these things.

And there are a lot of things that go into, you know, facilitating that kind of behavior.

But one of them is the notion that, that, uh, that's passed to other people, especially men is that forgiveness is a, is a weakness, right? So you can't, you shouldn't forgive.

It's a bad thing.

It shows that you're less of a man.

And you're supposed to instead, you know, focus on retribution, vengeance, and all these things against the other person when it's not about the other person.

It's really about you, and it's about you reclaiming your authority over yourself, right? So for me, for instance, all these things that happened to me formed my life because of the way I reacted to what it was.

And it wasn't until I told myself, and I consciously did this, is that he's still controlling my life.

He's dead.

He had been long dead.

And he's still influencing my choices and my, you know, my growth and my progression.

And so I really don't think that, you know, I think a lot of, you know, I just think the emphasis is put on the wrong person when you talk about forgiveness.