And so the father saw the kid a long ways off, and he came to meet him. And the kid started trying to tell him what a bum he was, what a failure he’d been in the business of living. But again, the father didn’t hear him. He didn’t argue with him at all. He didn’t say, “Look, I’ve got the record on you right here, and you sure are a bum, you’re no good. I’ve got it right down here. I know every time you turned right when you should have turned left. Get the grubbin’ hoe and get back on the back forty, and grub out some persimmon sprouts and sassafras bushes. And, maybe, if you do a good job, twenty-five years from now I’ll invite you in for lunch. He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He fell on his neck and kissed him. […] And he called the servants, and he said, “Kill the fatted calf. We’re going to have a party. The boy was dead and now he’s alive. He was lost, and now he’s come back home.”
I don’t know that there’s any way I can express how vexing this story has been to me. The only thing I ever really wanted—as a close second to being drunk—was to be right. Drinking, in fact, made that possible. Drinking pulled my worldview together. I knew who I was: I was a fuck-up. I was a loser. I was a sinner. And the great booby prize of my life was that I understood this, deep in my heart. My sponsor used to put it to me like this: “Never stand between an alcoholic and his misery because he will kill you to get to it.”
I don’t know that there’s any way I can express how vexing this story has been to me. The only thing I ever really wanted—as a close second to being drunk—was to be right. Drinking, in fact, made that possible. Drinking pulled my worldview together. I knew who I was: I was a fuck-up. I was a loser. I was a sinner. And the great booby prize of my life was that I understood this, deep in my heart. My sponsor used to put it to me like this: “Never stand between an alcoholic and his misery because he will kill you to get to it.”
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