Who Says You Cant Go Home Again Idiom
You Can't Go Home Again
This feels weird. I almost wish I didn't come here. Almost.
Of course, it's obvious, things change. Even the last time I was here in 1998 things felt different from when I had moved away in 1993. But I still had many friends and family around here at the time. Now I hardly know anyone and my family lives thousands of miles away.
When I arrived on Saturday, I drove by our old house, schools, ball parks and shopping malls. They all looked mostly the same — a few new buildings and some different stores at the mall but mostly familiar and recognizable. It really felt like going home again.
When I sat in the the car outside the house I lived in for 20 years, I was tempted to knock on the door so I could look around. But then I decided against it. My memories were joyful ones — why disturb them? I was happy to be home again. I've lived in nine different states since moving away and travelled to more than 80 countries. Yet that bungalow next to the best tobogganing hill in town will always be home.
Tonight feels different emotionally. I found out why everything in the old neighborhood looked the same. As I zoomed by town on the new highway, I could see there was plenty of new development — hotels, strip malls and suburbs — on the other side of the highway. No wonder the old neighborhood was static and undisturbed. All the action was elsewhere, west of the new highway to the city.
This evening, I walked around downtown in the city where I received my first two university degrees. I felt a pang of joy whenever I spied a familiar store or restaurant. There were a few empty storefronts and some new bars and eateries. Downtown looked a bit shabbier and emptier than I remembered. There were no familiar faces on the street. The local businesses probably could not compete with the new big box stores uptown. I wanted to revisit a favorite restaurant but it was closed for the night so I had to settle for a chain restaurant.
Everything feels weird. I'm nostalgic, disappointed and a little sad.
We all know that expression "You can't go home again." I Googled its meaning tonight and was referred to Thomas Wolfe's novel You Can't Go Home Again:
"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."
Wikipedia explained the meaning of the phrase perfectly:
"The phrase "you can't go home again" has entered American speech to point out how human nostalgia is weighted with both an inaccurately positive bias ("Absence makes the heart grow fonder") and an inability to appreciate the changes wrought by time on places and people we remember as static and permanent. In general terms, it means that attempts to relive youthful memories are never as fulfilling as during their initial creation." — Wikipedia
They nailed it, didn't they? "An inability to appreciate the changes wrought by time on places and people we remember as static and permanent."
Tomorrow night is my high school reunion. I've never gone to one before and the event presented a good opportunity to explore this beautiful part of the world again. I'm trying to appreciate the memories and good times. This place and the people here shaped my life and helped make me who I am. I hope to find some inspiration and answers here in the next few days that will help me figure out what to make of myself next.
Keep going….
Love,
Coco
Source: https://medium.com/@CocoShackleton/you-cant-go-home-again-be1a7bf3994b
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