Hitting Rewind

Supposedly you can't go back again.  The actual saying is "you can't go home again" which comes from the the novel "You Can't Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe, published in 1940.  These words come to the protagonist of Wolfe's story at the finale of the novel; "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood...back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame...back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time - back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."

No offence to Wolfe, but this is crap.  Of course you can go home again!  The catch is that you can't expect it to all be exactly the same.  The longer we are away from a certain place, physically or mentally, the more our perspective about it changes.  We are influenced by new ideas and experiences, making it impossible to return as the same person that left.

This weekend I figured out that even though you can't go back as the exact same person that left, the experiences you have in between can still bring you back as a similar person; one that feels the same way as before, but sees things more clearly.  It's like going back but better because you finally understand how things are supposed to be.

I'm sure this isn't the easiest train of thought to follow but it really is the most amazing thing I've learned to do so far this year.  As another saying goes, "if you love someone (or something) you're supposed to let it go, and if it comes back you know it was meant to be."  Well, in a year of letting things go, I have to say what a relief it's been to see some of those things come back better than ever.