Past Cudgel in Old

I have come to see how many people, including myself at times have used events in someone’s past as a punishment for them as a cudgel. We beat them with something that happened in the past, and sometimes we beat ourselves with events of the past.

My father often did that. He would fashion upon something I had done and for years he would attack me with it. He would not forgive me. He would not let it go. I’ve seen this with many people. I’ve seen it with married couples that cannot forgive. You did this you did that. All for some pain. It’s a form of psychological torture. But I realized quite obviously cannot change the past so slap that cudgel out of someone’s hand and let yourself live and let it all go.

As a child, I felt like, and I tried to hurt myself because of things I had done. We learned from our parents, and that was a sick thing I learned. Do not forgive myself. Do not let it go live the past as pain and punishment.

It took me a while, but I realize how sick all that was I was sick. My father was to have done that to me. How sick it was of my boss of 40 years to sometimes recall an incident of my life that was painful that I had told him about and then he would use that against me to make me feel pain. Or things he witnessed. He would hold it over me watch me squirm. He enjoyed it and it was very sick. I learned from those people to not do it to others because it is a sick thing to do to inflict such psychological pain over and over with the repetition of something ugly that happened to someone in the past.

Society and nations do that with other countries such as our holding World War II horrors over the heads of the German people most of whom had nothing to do with that distant time.

Yes, this happened or that happened but now there is no changing that. I learned to look at such people as sick and I don’t want to be like them. Not like my father was or my former boss was. Not the pettiness of so many couples that won’t let things go, but keep reminding each other of some stupid slight of the past.

Let it go, move on here and now.
Stop looking backward and beating yourself for something you did but cannot change now. Or beating somebody else about something they did.

Living in the present without looking back and using the past as a weapon or instrument of torture is the sane good thing to do. Try to see ourselves and those around us as we are now and not incidents of the past.