It’s about how one person can go from the very bottom and come out on top as a completely different person.
Derek knows the breakdown of his family is his fault and the only way to fix it is to become a better person. Instead, it only adds further pain and suffering.
A better way to do this that is not plagiarism is by reading the paragraph source, putting it away so it's out of sight, then creating a paragraph of your own from scratch using the ideas that you just read.