365 Days in Aspen

Can’t Go Home Again

home-wolfeyoucantgohomeagainThe words, "you can't go home again" in passage from Thomas Wolfe is often quoted. I'll be transparent and say that I haven't read the book from which this is taken. So I don't know the context Wolfe intended. 

For some, I suspect the saying reflects melancholy. An irretrievable lost past. 

For me, it suggests separation, but in a different way. More like expansion. 

Have you ever noticed that once you've left "home" and traveled and lived elsewhere, home doesn't look quite the same? Your old house seems so much smaller. You feel too big to fit anymore. It's like as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.”

I'm going back to Atlanta for a few days in a few weeks. It was my home for nearly 30 years. Yet I already feel distant from it, like it wouldn't fit the new me ever again.  

 

 

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