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The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus once wrote:
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you"
He was suggesting a state of constant flux. None of us can ever truly go home again. Wherever home is, it is constantly evolving. More importantly, we are in an ongoing process of intellectual, physical, and emotional change. What frightened us when we were nine, makes us laugh when we're sixteen. What put us in awe when we were sixteen, seems mundane when we're thirty.
Wow, this pretty much sums it up, doesn't it. So true and profound.
I wonder if this is why some people get tired of living. Their world just becomes different and they experience so much. I will never figure that out, but it seems to be true.
You can go home again however things are never going to be exactly as they were. I am about to move back to the town I grew up half my life. Both my parents have passed away. The only family in town now is my brother...so its going to be different but it is still the town I grew up in. A lot of my friends that I went to school with are in the area.
There are two stop lights there that were not there when I was a kid but the main street is still much the same.
Good luck when you go back home and I am sorry for the loss of both your parents.
I have not read all the posts so I may repeat but the saying; "You can never go home again" isn't necessarily being literal, the memories you have of your past become twisted and diluted so they can't be repeated, summers seemed so long, you had a million friends, your house was gigantic, etc..
I have not read all the posts so I may repeat but the saying; "You can never go home again" isn't necessarily being literal, the memories you have of your past become twisted and diluted so they can't be repeated, summers seemed so long, you had a million friends, your house was gigantic, etc..
Yes, it was not meant to be literal. What I remember is the hills used to be so much higher.
I know what the OP is talking about. I think anyone who grew up in a major American city like DC, SF or NYC before gentrification and relocated far away knows what it is like not being able to "go home". I was born and raised in San Francisco before it became a gentrified yuppie/transplant paradise that was completely unaffordable for an average American. Whenever I go back to SF, it seems like the city has lost most of its original charm. There are hardly any more "normal" working middle class folks who live in SF. The only people in SF are people who are rich enough not to work or the exact opposite side of the socioeconomic spectrum of people so poor, marginalized and disenfranchised that they are afraid to get jobs because they would no longer be eligible for SF's disgustingly low quality (extremely dangerous and polluted as well) public housing and meager government handouts. You will be hard-pressed to meet someone who was born and raised in SF still living in the city limits. Many SF natives still living in the city are permanent members of the underclass living in the projects or people from a privileged class who can still afford to live in SF. Everyone that lives in SF today is from overseas or some far off podunk place like Maine or Alaska. SF is the most beautiful city in America, in my opinion, but I could probably never move back because you have to be basically rich to live there today. Maybe when I am an old man who is established and owns his own successful business I could move back. But as a flat broke struggling recent college grad in my late 20's, moving back to the City by the Bay is an unrealistic pipe dream. Also, I probably wouldn't want to move back because I couldn't stand being around the tens of thousands of super-smug South Park caliber annoying recent SF transplants who bought their way into the City and have no roots there.
Last edited by goldenchild08; 02-20-2011 at 10:06 PM..
I know what the OP is talking about. I think anyone who grew up in a major American city like DC, SF or NYC before gentrification and relocated far away knows what it is like not being able to "go home". I was born and raised in San Francisco before it became a gentrified yuppie/transplant paradise that was completely unaffordable for an average American. Whenever I go back to SF, it seems like the city has lost most of its original charm. You will be hard-pressed to meet someone who was born and raised in SF still living in the city limits. Everyone that lives in SF today is from overseas or some far off podunk place like Maine or Alaska. SF is the most beautiful city in America, in my opinion, but I could probably never move back because you have to be basically rich to live there today. Maybe when I am an old man who is established and owns his own successful business I could move back. But as a flat broke struggling recent college grad in my late 20's, moving back to the City by the Bay is an unrealistic pipe dream. Also, I probably wouldn't want to move back because I couldn't stand being around the tens of thousands of super-smug South Park caliber annoying recent SF transplants who bought their way into the City and have no roots there.
Interesting, that is exactly where I was this weekend. SF.
Great topic, mistygrl92. Thanks for bringing it up.
I have very strong feelings about this, having been raised in a small Quaker town in rural New Jersey (yes, such towns actually exist!), but lived most of my life in other places, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, and now overseas.
My attempts to "go home" have usually involved high school reunions and the like. As I've aged, the feelings of alienation and loss have become more and more profound. For a long time, I chalked it all up to the kind of changes in my home town that others have referred to in this thread, as economic and social conditions modifed the physical structure, landscape, architecture, and society of what I remembered as a very simpler, and more "homelike"place. I was especially struck by goldenchild08's description of SF as it was and now is. As a person who very clearly remembers that city in the 1960s, I agree that SF used to be a very different, friendler, and more welcoming city...
But then I reflected on the thought that our whole country is less friendly and welcoming these days. As a nation, we have more selfishly rich and more crushingly poor people, and fewer in the middle to act as the glue that holds us together. There seems to be a diminishing of the attitude that change can be positive and that at the same time there are traditions worthy of preservation.
Of course, the real revelation in all of this is that in addition to our "homes" in many cases no longer being the places we would necessarily want to "go home" to, we are also no longer the people we were when our concept of home was first fixed in our minds. As the places where we first felt loved and for which we still feel an affinity have changed as time has passed, so have we become different people from the young man or woman we once were...the places are still there, but we are not the people we once were.
In one of his essays, George Orwell once wrote that the little boy in the photo that his mother kept on the piano in her house had nothing in common with the man he now was, except that they happened to be the same person.
Now when I return to the little town by the river where I grew up and experienced my first kiss, where I broke my arm in a football game, and rode my sled down the hills until my toes were numb, and learned to hit the curve ball in the summer sun and played baseball until it was too dark to see, will never be the same. I can't ever go there again -- because the "I" that I have become is no longer the "me" who lived in that town.
There is sadness and loss in this realization, but there is also a kind of wisdom. I have always wished that Thomas Wolfe could have lived longer and revisited the ideas he expressed as a young writer. So much of what he gave us evidenced the brilliant first awakenings of a dazzling youthful talent; if only he could have had time to reflect on the sadness and longing he evoked and contributed more nuanced works which dealt more deeply with his themes -- particularly the one with which this thread concerns itself; namely, the blending of time, and place, and loss.
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
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When you have a great experience in a place and you leave, your memories seem to be attached to it and, over time, the more mundane reality can often be suppressed and the great moments highlighted. If you try to go back to the place to relive the greatness, you find the mundane reality. Further, you find that there may not have been anything special about the place - it was the people you shared the place with.
You can go home to people, places are meaningless. Protect the relationships you value and you can always go home.
When you have a great experience in a place and you leave, your memories seem to be attached to it and, over time, the more mundane reality can often be suppressed and the great moments highlighted. If you try to go back to the place to relive the greatness, you find the mundane reality. Further, you find that there may not have been anything special about the place - it was the people you shared the place with.
You can go home to people, places are meaningless. Protect the relationships you value and you can always go home.
You are exactly right. I have been living here in Florida with my daughter for 10 years. I miss my friends, those are the people I am moving back to Texas for. These are friends I have known half my life. Here in Florida I just haven't made friends like that.
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