Be Aware Traveler

There is a famous quote stating that you can’t go home again ( Thomas C Wolf); life moves on, people change, and circumstances alter. We can visit. Be a bit sentimental about the past. But move back in. No.

I once tried to reinsert myself into a previous life barely a year after I’d left. The locale, the people, and the environment. It was almost as it had been. But people had grown, changed, and moved on in their lives, and so had I. After a few weeks, I moved on. Time is a teacher, but sometimes we are not ready to listen to its lessons.

Back before I started the insane whirl of places and events, which I now refer to as my Pius Itinerancy, I was for a while a habitue of Greenwich Village in New York City ( another place I can never return to). There I made the acquaintance of a Beat Generation poet who called himself Mother Hibbard. His signature poem in frequent readings ended in this line ( which was also the title I believe), “Be aware, traveler, you’ll never pass this way again.” Being young and never having left the nearby areas of New York state, I didn’t understand the import of what he was saying. Within about two years I desperately wanted to claw my way back to my former place and sadly understood exactly what he’d meant.

We belong to a species that binds time, recollects experience, and yet ignores the value and worth of the experiences we are passing through. And then we discover that we can never go back. We’d be much better off intently working on improving our present. Being truly present with family and friends. Being grateful for the dog who wants you to play with him, or the cat in the window watching the birds.

“Be aware, traveler, you’ll never pass this way again.”

Daily writing prompt

If you could relive one year of your life, which one would it be?

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