Today I found myself back at the dorms I lived in as an undergrad at Harvard. In all the intervening years I had never been back, so it was quite a singular experience. <\/p>\n
The quad was nearly empty on this cold crisp winter’s day, but in my mind I could see all the people I had shared this space with, as though they had just stepped away, and would be back at any moment.<\/p>\n
At first I wondered whether I was really different after all these years. “Was that me, or somebody else?” I found myself thinking. “And how would I know?”<\/p>\n
But then something unexpected happened. As I wondered around the neighborhood, checking out houses and shops, I noticed a difference in myself. For example, I stopped in at the local grocery, and greeted the man behind the counter while I picked up a few things — and realized he was the same guy who’d been behind the counter when I was a student. Turns out he’s been running that place for forty years. We got into a nice conversation about the neighborhood.<\/p>\n
I realized that in all the time I had lived at the dorm, I had never explored these places, just a few blocks away. I hadn’t learned the geography, hadn’t noticed where the stores were, hadn’t gotten to know the shopkeepers, hadn’t been curious at all about the world outside.<\/p>\n
The teenage version of myself had not been an explorer of strange neighborhoods — quite the contrary. In all the time I was at school, I had learned next to nothing about the vibrant places just beyond the dorm.<\/p>\n
For the person I am now, such a thing would be unthinkable.<\/p>\n
So it seems that people do change, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today I found myself back at the dorms I lived in as an undergrad at Harvard. In all the intervening years I had never been back, so it was quite a singular experience. The quad was nearly empty on this cold crisp winter’s day, but in my mind I could see all the people I … Continue reading “You can’t go home again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14435"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14436,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14435\/revisions\/14436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}