But the younger brother can show us how guilt works against us until we name it and admit it to someone who has the power to put it away. The younger brother is impatient. He will not wait for life to educate him about what is important, but imagines, as young people will, that the grass is greener elsewhere, and that the best way to learn life is to plunge in and enjoy it. The father cannot control him, so he accommodates him. The boy takes his share of the family wealth and goes off and squanders it, in a sad story told millions of times, of being taken advantage of by those more cunning, and finding oneself reduced to the status of those equally undisciplined.
Life gets hard.
Then, as the scripture says, he comes to himself. He sees his misery for what it is, for a travesty on the life which would have been his, had he only stuck to the straight and narrow. Somewhere inside the reckless and immature and degraded hog-slopper remains the son of a wise and fair father, and the boy finds something wise and fair to do. He'll throw himself on the mercy of his father, refuse to expect to be forgiven for his folly, and instead plead to be allowed to be a servant there, which life he knows is better than his life in a strange land. So he puts away pride and stubbornness and, in the honesty of his self-appraisal, walks his way back along that path on which he fled responsibility.