Leaving Home

The former town mayor told George Webber the truth even before George discovered it for himself. "You can't go home again," he told George. "Don't you know you can't go home again, young man?" The words lingered in George's mind for many years to come.

The story continues after this fateful conversation, and George is eventually banned from his hometown. His novel and life story, Home to Our Mountains, caused the town's inhabitants to hate him.

Is home really home after you have been away from it for a time? Is it true that once you have left a place then you will never return to that same place again? If perception is reality, then does a mind perceive "home" as the place in which it discovered it's own identity? Can a mind call "home" a place that ultimately provokes painful memories of confusion, frustration, and loneliness?

Reader, if home is the place in which we discover our own value, then I say that we can never go "home" again. Oh reader, don't you know that youth is confusion, frustration, and loneliness.

It is sad to know that, at some point, home won't be "home" anymore. It will simply be the place where you spent your childhood.

Letting "home" go is an essential leap in one's personal maturation. One must learn that home is not a house or a building. Home is not a pet or even a person. Home is accepting yourself as God made you. We are never really home until we say, "God has given me so much, and I'm going to thank him by living my life in accordance with his will." We must believe this statement no matter what we have.

Those who believe will find thier happy home.

Yes, we can live anywhere for any length of time then. We do not live at home. Home lives inside of us.