In the end, everyone gets it wrong. Absolutely everyone. Because that’s just how life is. Common sense doesn’t win, logic doesn’t win, for we are not neatly ordered, well-mannered existences. This passage is a parable that reveals what life truly is: squandered inheritances, demands, concessions, unexpected love, bursts of affection, terrible emptiness, awkward silences, invitations never received, buried grudges, jealousy, resentment, interrupted journeys, misunderstandings, bitter brotherhood, clumsy fatherhood, and unwanted freedom.
And perhaps the father gets it wrong, too, but he gets it wrong by trusting too much, by being obsessed with freedom. He grants freedom to children who refuse to stop being slaves. Maybe the father is wrong because, in the end, we all get it wrong. But his mistake is one of offering freedom. Even to the eldest son, he says, “Everything that is mine is yours.” It is an invitation to step out of the mindset of compensation, an invitation to take control of one’s own life and begin to make choices, an invitation to stop waiting for others to resolve the story for us.
Perhaps the father is wrong, perhaps he exaggerates—freedom is a bridge too far for us humans.
The only one we have – to avoid dying as victims. Maybe the father is wrong, but if I must choose how to get life wrong, I would want to get it wrong like him: obsessed with freedom.
