A letter to Father

Dear Father,

Remember the time you told me about the man you met in the wilderness? You said the man was a carpenter who had an odd appearance. You thought he was a person of low esteem. He was a short guy with tanned skin, dark hair and brown eyes. You said he wore a white cloth with a seamless undergarment that was woven in one piece from top to bottom.

You were out of water in the desert. You were parched to death when he reached you. You told me that you drank from him that day, and you lived to tell his story.

“He was a funny guy,” you said. "he told me he made a man build a boat in dry land once. 'why would you do that?’ I asked. He looked at the sky and told me that rain was going to flood the earth. I asked if it happened as he had predicted. 'Of course, it did,’ he replied. Another time he fought a man the whole night to end up blessing him in the end. He told me stories of the people he friended.”

“He was very loud. He said he became like that after he became a street preacher. He told parables packed with essences and argued heavily with the religious leaders. Oh, they despised his very existence. But he succeeded in convincing a hand full of them.  He friended his enemies.”

That night you said, was like poetry being poured into certitude. Your whole life you had been running away from reality in every book you read and in the relationships you tend to develop. But that day he told you stories that didn’t drive you to escape reality, but make sense of it. So now you prefer to live in reality and not in the made-up world because your heart can see the hidden.

You told me to pursue that man. You said if I get to meet him, he would tell me my purpose. You wanted to give me the life you had, the one he gave you. So I read through the accounts to get clues to find him. But then I grew out of it and run off my way,  to create my purpose.

I started fishing to earn money. The world calls my profession “The pursuit of success.”   But let's be honest, that is an inflated term. Yet I kept doing it to survive the reality you love so much. I loathed what you have loved.

However, I am not writing this to notify you of all my misdeeds, but to tell you what happened next. 

One day,  I was out in the sea with the gang. We worked all night to catch some fish, but we were unsuccessful. It was then that I understood that I can not create my fate. Ever since I learned how to make money,  all I ever did was fish. But the nets were never full; and even if I catch a few, they will be sold, and I will have to circle back to do the same thing I have done again and again. I had reached rock bottom then,  the lowest I could get.

Some crowd were at the shore sitting in a row listening to a short guy. I approached the seaside. My heart was breaking with every breath I took. 

I started to wash my net for the last time. I decided that I was can no longer go on in life. The guy who was preaching came in my direction,  I saw his brown eyes that were familiar to me as if from a distant dream. “Can I use your boat for a little while?” he asked with a voice fairly louder than the normal range for the situation. “You can take it, I no longer need it anyways,” I said. He didn’t reply to my negativity, just looked at me and smirked.  Then he stood on the boat and continued preaching.

After he was done and the people were dismissed he approached me and said to me, “Go out into deep water. Let the nets down so you can catch some fish.” That was a slur to me, but I didn’t want to be rude to him so I told him the night I had. Nonetheless, he kept asking me to go back to the sea. So I went back to the sea for his sake.

Dear father, I am writing to let you know that I found THE MAN, or rather he found me as he has found you. The net got full for the first time, and I knew at that moment that it was him. You said he would tell me my purpose, and he did, he said I am a fisher of men.

_With love, The prodigal son