Ki Thavo: The acknowledgement 

Ki Thavo, when you arrive, opens the parsha. Arrival is the quandary of Zeno's paradox: the argument that since movement to the goal produces a fractional advance, the goal can never be reached because there is always another, smaller, fractional gap between the runner and the goal. Half of a half of a half of a half...Based upon common experience of reaching goals, the paradox is commonly considered an absurdity. This concept does, however seem related to important mathematical concepts like limits ( the basis of calculus) and infinite series ( a fundamental basis of computer science). In my understanding of the parsha, Zeno's paradox prevails.

When have you arrived? When you set foot? When you harvest the grain? When the next generation is born?  When you are a billionaire? The ambiguity means that the goal will never be  reached. 

But there is a point at which the payments begin. In the good times, they are gifts of gratitude; appeasements -  given in the hope that the prosperity continues. Then comes the exile; you have to pay the mortgage after eviction; and the interest has become astronomic and it continues to increase until the situation is hopeless. In retrospect, you seem to have arrived, enjoyed and lost. You know that you arrived because you are paying. 

Are we given the choice of not arriving? The foundation story of the nation is tied to arrival in the land. It is the promise Gd made to the ancestors, a motivator of the Exodus.  As it turns out, over the long history of "exile", the land was a mythic rallying point, the object of collective longing.  It became more important as a dream - a dream no one thought could be realized - than a place.  And then, after an excessive, unspeakable down payment, the land became a reality, a physical goal. Enter Zeno. 

The parsha prescribes a declaration that accompanies the first fruit celebration of arrival. 

 אֲרַמִּי֙ אֹבֵ֣ד אָבִ֔י וַיֵּ֣רֶד מִצְרַ֔יְמָה וַיָּ֥גׇר שָׁ֖ם

“My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt 

This declaration is repeated in the annual  Passover Seder. For all the centuries of exile, the dream of arrival was preserved. 

The meaning of   אֹבֵ֣ד (oveyd) is ambiguous.  Onkelos, the official   translation of  the Torah renders the  passage: 

לָבָן אֲרַמָּאָה בָּעָא לְאוֹבָדָא יָת אַבָּא

Lavan the Arami wanted to destroy my forefather. 

Rashi follows Onkelos and the Passover Haggadah peruses this line, characterizing Lavan as worse than  Pharoah. 

Ibn Ezra, based upon grammar comes to the modern  English translations (JPS, Koren). He concludes: 

The meaning of our phrase thus is, a perishing Aramean was my father. Its import is, I did not inherit the land from my father, for my father was poor when he came to Aram. He was also a stranger in Egypt. He was few in number. 

I like to combine these ideas. The Egyptian bondage was the result of Jacob's travail. He had tried to re-establish his Aramian roots with Lavan, but that would lead to his destruction: economic and physical  according to the Torah text, national per the Haggadah's interpretation. Regardless, Jacob's return to Lavan established him as a non Canaan native, despite his second generation status ( his father was born in Canaan and never left during his lifetime). When the famine struck, Jacob was stateless ( a model for many subsequent generations of his descendants). He had tried to return to Aram, but the result of that travail brought him to Egypt, the land where his long lost favorite son had succeeded beyond all expectation. Egypt could never be arrival. It was bondage. 

Arrival is always a dream. Be grateful for the approach; you will have to pay for it.