I listened yesterday as Dr. William Petit talked to Oprah about the evil that came into his life that destroyed his wife, his two daughters, and his home, that when it left, there was very little of himself standing, he was a man he didn’t even know.
A few points struck me as he talked, one is how evil feels looking at it from the inside, and how he used to see evil somewhere out there, a distant thing. He was introduced to evil in a very large way, and it totally changed who he is and how he sees the world.
There is a huge difference between understanding intellectually what evil is, in comparison to living in the throes of what it destroys, what it takes away and what lay in the aftermath and how you will deal when it comes knocking.
Feeling evil and its energy and knowing how it tromps into life with no regard to life and feelings, is to feel evil’s blindness to another human being.
Oprah asked him about forgiveness and evil, and I can’t remember his words, but I understand his feelings on this. That forgiveness is no match against evil.
Forgiveness always seems to take on the image of being able to negate what happened, to find a place of peace in spite of the hole that evil left behind, or perhaps not even acknowledging the hole it left behind.
Society has this unchallenged ideal that forgiveness trumps evil, that forgiveness can change evil.
I believe what he is saying is that evil is an actual phenomena that we can’t change by forgiveness and that we are to acknowledge its power.
The energy of evil is to destroy; to hurt, to deliver pain, it isn’t warm and fuzzy.
I thought he sat in the middle of what is, in the center of what happened and described what evil feels like and how it changes who you are.
The challenge left behind is who will you now become?
I watched a few clips, and you can see he is still freshly wounded, that it pains him to talk and how he is trying to wrap his mind around such sudden drastic changes in his life.
Holding on trying to focus on the good, bringing more good, trying to not succumb to the negative pull of drowning or giving up.
He describes closure, as the hole will eventually lose its ragged edges that waves of goodness will wash over those rough spots leaving them smooth, but the hole will always remain open, a hole in his heart and soul.
I agree.
It is also an opening to find your authentic self, a you that stands behind the roles and titles, a you that lives beyond the surface of life; the hole drops you into the center of your being.
Being a whole you.