Songbook #3: The Prodigal Son
Ndibuyile by Bongeziwe Mabandla
Jules on our “babymoon” in the mountains off Route 62
Welcome to the third weekly edition of The Songbook. There are 12 new subscribers this week. Join the 58 subscribers of this newsletter by signing up below:
The Songbook is a personal compilation where I share my writing, as well as content that is significant to me in some way. Similar to how music punctuates our days, I’ll use songs I love as writing prompts (and will include a Spotify link to each song). You can read the previous edition here.
Ndibuyile
Last month, Jules and I celebrated our boy’s impending arrival by spending a weekend in a cabin in the mountains off Route 62. We shared good meals, walks and fireside chats, and reflected on how lucky we were to be on this journey together.
On a morning walk on The Fynbos Trail, we spoke about our wishes for our boy. I shared several thoughts as we navigated the 5km footpath around the perimeter of the farm, but in retrospect, I mostly thought about what Jules had to say. She said that she wants to raise a boy that knows that he is loved and has the confidence in knowing that he is enough.
Jules has an ability to let you talk for half an hour, and then capture the essence of what you were trying to say, or wished you’d said, in a couple of sentences. Perhaps I got a little side-tracked over a few kilometres of the trail talking about the kind of parents I’d like us to be, rather than my wishes for our boy. But I’ve never really been too afraid of a tangent.
The idea of feeling as though you are enough, got me thinking about one of my favourite clips on YouTube: Guy Ritchie talking to Joe Rogan about his perspective on The Parable of The Prodigal Son. It’s an x-rated take on the biblical verse, but I’d say that I learnt more from Mr Ritchie than I ever did sitting in a pew.
Ritchie’s perspective on the parable was distinct from my previous understanding. You are neither the sensible son nor the wasteful son: you are the father. And you have to accept both the sensible and wasteful sides of yourself, to be at peace with yourself.
The essence of the story is that you are the father. Your older son is your intellect that says ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’, he’s trying to reconcile and make sense of a prosaic and material world. The younger son, being the wild and feral entity that he is, wants to go into the world and find out what it’s all about. So in his recklessness, and sense of adventure, he finds that he can’t escape himself, so he has to return to himself. And at which point, he has to accept who he is.
The intellect is left out of the equation, as the older brother, as he can’t understand the significance of the journey of the wasteful brother. In the end, you have to leave yourself, to understand the value of yourself. You have to lose stuff before you realise that all the stuff that you are losing is ephemeral, and transitory. It’s not yours. You are enough. You were always enough.
A night I often look back on is a Friday night watching Bongeziwe Mabandla live at the Soweto Theatre with my oldest friend, Justin. Bongeziwe hails from the Eastern Cape, sings beautiful folk music in isiXhosa, and has a voice like honey. You don’t need to see him live in concert to know that he’s one of the good guys, but it sure helps.
The song I was most looking forward to hearing that night was Ndiyubile. Bongeziwe told us that it was inspired by The Parable of The Prodigal Son. I was feeling adrift and alone at the time of that concert, and Bongeziwe’s voice was everything I needed. The very next Friday night, I met Jules for the first time at a dinner party in Johannesburg.
It’s Heritage Day today — our boy’s expected due date. I can’t contain my excitement to meet our little man. We are feeling that the champagne moment is imminent, the first of many. More significantly, when times get tough and he feels adrift, I share his mom’s hope for him. The hope that he always knows that he is loved, and that he is enough. And he always will be.
Bongeziwe Mabandla’s Setlist | Soweto Theatre | 27 September 2018
Thanks for reading the third edition of The Songbook. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to like, comment, or share. You can also respond directly to this email. I’d love to hear from you.
- Nic
Love this Nic! We are all sooo excited for the arrival of baby boy and love him so much already
You write beautifully, Nic. And you have a wise and wonderful wife: "to raise a boy that knows that he is loved and has the confidence in knowing that he is enough." You will come to know that this is the most important thing.