Can You Go Home Again?

I remember lying on the floor next to our Christmas tree when I was five or six. The main ornament for the tree was a collection of colored balls. Red, green, gold, blue, silver. Though I don't remember the specifics of the daydream, the balls were planets which I visited. Whatever the daydream, it was vivid, intensely pleasing.

The next year, I laid down next to the tree, beckoning the experience. At the time, I am sure I remembered the specifics of the daydream; but, I could not conjure the vividness, the pleasure. It was one of my earliest disappointing experiences.

I grew up Lutheran. Each Christmas season we went to Wednesday Advent services. At the end of the services, the main lights in the church were turned off and the congregation sang Abide With Me a cappella. I anticipated that moment all week. I heard the song recently. Though the feeling returned, it was not as intense. Again disappointment.

Thomas Wolfe wrote Look Homeward Angel. I read it in college and was taken by his language, the story and the characters. Some years later, I re-read it. It obviously hadn't changed; but, the book did not deliver the anticipated transportment. I brought a different viewpoint to it and could not recreate my first experience.

Can you duplicate specific pleasure? From my experience, no. But, we try to. We all take pictures when on vacation and pull them out to reminisce. We sit with family and friends - "Do you remember when….?" Should we? Why not. As long as we don't close ourselves to new experience, remembering past pleasure for its own sake seems, well, pleasurable. I just have to remember not to judge the recollection against the original and find it wanting.