Allow me to wax philosophical, for once

You can never go home again.

That's what they say. It's obviously a lie, but it's still what they say. As long as you have the will, the financial and temporal means, and are in good enough health to travel, you can go home. No problem. In fact, entire businesses have been built around the concept of people going home. Perhaps not even to their own homes, but to somebody else's home. Imagine the horror. What you can never do, however, is go back.

You cannot, thus far, go back to your childhood home, the way it was. Sure, some things will be the same, some of the buildings, some of the people, some of the furniture in your old room. But the simple fact of the matter is that no matter how much you might like to go back, you just can't. Live with it.

All is not lost, however. Even if you have been fortunate enough to be allowed the opportunity to see what life is like across the county line, hell, even in THE BIG CITY, there is still a cornucopia of things to appreciate in your hometown. Yes, no matter how small, or how large the difference between it and the place you work/study/watch too much tv in. You just have to accept the fact that the things won't be the same as when you came home from junior high on a Friday afternoon to go out an play football in the glorious sunshine. You may think it will be too tiny, now that you've "seen the world", but if you have any positive memories at all from your childhood, it won't be. It'll be "quaint". It'll be "within walking distance", "close to nature", "near good neighbors", or even, shock, horror, "a good place to settle down to raise the kids".

This is human nature. For some yet undisclosed purpose, we have been given genes. They have been packed with, as far as I know, lots of stuff I don't know. But somewhere deep inside, included in every human package, is the desire to explore. It's different in all people, which is why some peolpe go to the next block while others drive buggies on the moon, but it's there. It's in your system, there's nothing you can do about it. For most people, however, this desire can be satisfied. Some people get there when they turn 17 and realise running away isn't all it's cracked up to be, some not until they hit 108. Though most reach it by then. I mean, getting there at 109 just seems silly, really.


Which doesn't make for a very good opportunity to segue, but still. The reason for the above rant is that I went home this past weekend, and everywhere I looked, it was just idyllic. Completely! Almost shockingly so. Maybe it was because I was showing it and somebody I care a great deal about to somebody I care a great deal about. Either way, it was just perfect, a shimmering pearl on the edge of toppling into the lake-with-a-name-that-doesn't-really-sound-very-poetic-in-English. Or Swedish, come to think of it.

Time to say goodbye for now. Personally, it feels like I'll hit that point where my exploratory desire no longer dictates my life at some point right in between 17 and 108. Then I'll go back again.