APAD: You can't go home again

Meaning: If you try to return to a place from your past it won't be the same as

it was.

 

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It sounds like another version of "one does not step in the same river twice."

 

My friend Bill used to be a sucker for many useless sentimental songs rehashing

similar ideas, e.g., "you can no longer go back to the past." He couldn't get

enough of the tear-jerking lyrics delivered in simple yet bitter-sweet melodies.

Invariably, they seemed to tell him that he was the victim, the abandoned, the

rejected, and the disinherited and he was entitled to indulge in self-pity. For

a naive, senstitive youth with some inferiority complex, that music was as

powerful as bolts of lightning and as addictive as a drug.

 

In comparision, the epitaph of the pagan philosopher Epictetus should cheer everyone up:

 

    Here lies Epictetus,

    a slave maimed in body,

    the ultimate in poverty,

    and favored by the gods.