I Too Have Returned

I stood before The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Rembrandt’s light didn’t illuminate; it forgave. It gathered the lost and the weary and laid them gently at the father’s feet. The son’s head pressed into that robe as if pressing into time itself, his body collapsing under the weight of distance and the miracle of being seen. One slipper missing, one hand open in surrender. The father’s hands resting on his back, one firm, one trembling, were less of a touch, more of an understanding: that home was never a place, but a permission given to soften.

And as I stood there, something in the painting began to speak not aloud, but from that quiet, half-lit space where art and memory overlap.

May all the goodness extended find you on your doorstep, not in its grand gestures, but in the quiet hours when you’ve stopped expecting it. May it tap your shoulder softly, sit beside you, and ask nothing in return. Let it stay long enough for you to release the heaviness you’ve carried..the unspoken fears, the moments you swallowed whole so as not to tremble in front of others. Let goodness be patient as you weep, as you unfold, as you relearn how to trust that the world sometimes offers comfort without making demands.

And when you’ve exhausted the shadow of your sorrow, may that same goodness remind you with the calm assurance of all the lives you’ve lived: don’t panic, don’t tremble, don’t shake. Don’t lose sight of what’s ahead. Life is what you make it; it extends from within. It doesn’t simply happen to us..it breathes through our own small choices, the ones we make when no one is watching. You have the right to mold your life into something that reflects your tenderness and your defiance alike.

May the strangers you help along the way remember your name not for its sound but for how it made them feel seen, even briefly, in a world that often forgets to look. May they smile back at you, confirming your humanity and theirs, reigniting the fragile belief you once lost in being human, in what it means to be despite it all. Because every small act of grace you give returns, eventually not always to your door, but to your soul.

May you never again take the rising sun for granted, its unrelenting mercy to start again each morning. Nor the clouds, the sky, the quiet choreography of nature that continues whether or not you are watching. May you notice the books you left dusting on your shelves, they waited for you, as patient witnesses of your becoming, holding the worlds you once promised yourself you’d return to.

May you love again the stranger you once called 'self'. That half-forgotten version of you, the one who laughed too loud, trusted too easily, and loved with reckless sincerity. May you find that self awaiting your arrival once more, seated at the same table where you sit now, not to judge you but to welcome you back.

And when you feast again, may the food taste like longing, that beautiful ache of remembering what it means to be alive and in love with the act of living. May the love you give, even when unreturned, keep you warm. May it not harden you but soften you into something stronger, something real. May you never again lose sight of the passing sky above you or the steadfast ground beneath your feet. The world remains, even in your absence, and it waits for you to notice.

And above all, may you never lose belief in what you can do, not in the sense of achievement, but in the quiet conviction of your ability to be. Find your compass. Find your mission. Let it be imperfect, let it be human. And when the time comes, die helplessly romantic, not in the shallow sense of love, but in devotion to life itself.

Die a failure, yes, but a failure well lived, one who dared, who reached, who felt everything, and refused to leave the world untouched.

I looked again at the father's hands, resting on his son like a benediction.

One belonged to strength, the other to mercy.

I understood then that goodness is not something that arrives; it returns.

Quietly and faithfully, like dawn breaking over a familiar threshold.