You Cant Go Home Again Meaning
You lot Can't Go Home Again
This feels weird. I nigh wish I didn't come here. Well-nigh.
Of course, it'southward obvious, things change. Even the concluding time I was here in 1998 things felt different from when I had moved abroad in 1993. But I still had many friends and family around here at the time. Now I hardly know anyone and my family unit lives thousands of miles away.
When I arrived on Saturday, I drove by our former house, schools, brawl parks and shopping malls. They all looked mostly the same — a few new buildings and some unlike stores at the mall but mostly familiar and recognizable. It really felt like going home over again.
When I sabbatum in the the car outside the house I lived in for xx years, I was tempted to knock on the door so I could look around. Simply and then I decided against it. My memories were joyful ones — why disturb them? I was happy to exist home again. I've lived in nine different states since moving abroad and travelled to more than fourscore countries. Withal that bungalow next to the best tobogganing hill in town will e'er be home.
Tonight feels different emotionally. I plant out why everything in the old neighborhood looked the same. As I zoomed past town on the new highway, I could come across 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 effectually downtown in the urban center 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 eatery just it was closed for the night and so I had to settle for a chain eatery.
Everything feels weird. I'k cornball, disappointed and a little sad.
We all know that expression "You can't become home again." I Googled its meaning this night and was referred to Thomas Wolfe'due south novel You Can't Go Home Again:
"You tin can't go back home to your family, dorsum home to your childhood … dorsum home to a young man'southward dreams of glory and of fame … dorsum home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting simply which are irresolute all the time — back home to the escapes of Time and Memory."
Wikipedia explained the meaning of the phrase perfectly:
"The phrase "you lot can't go abode 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 capeesh the changes wrought by time on places and people nosotros recollect every bit static and permanent. In full 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 schoolhouse reunion. I've never gone to 1 before and the event presented a adept opportunity to explore this cute part of the globe again. I'chiliad trying to appreciate the memories and good times. This place and the people hither shaped my life and helped make me who I am. I hope to discover some inspiration and answers here in the next few days that volition help me figure out what to make of myself next.
Keep going….
Dearest,
Coco
Source: https://medium.com/@CocoShackleton/you-cant-go-home-again-be1a7bf3994b