A few days ago, I was listening to an interview of a Venezuelan writer. She had left the shell of what was, only a decade or so ago, one of the more thriving economies of Latin America. Now living in Spain, she had written a novel based in today’s Venezuela, in a effort to come to grips with the precipitous decline of her birthplace. During the interview, she made a profound comment: “The country I want to go back to no longer exists.”

Her observation has a parallel in our individual lives. We remember, dream of, at times long for a return to our past…to a place, a situation, a person. Yet, such objects of longing are ethereal imagery, no more than the chemistry of our brains. We might return to the shell of a building or a place or a city, or even the still breathing shell of an individual. But the confluence of the innumerable circumstances and emotions of a moment were irretrievably gone the instant we lived them.

As I age, the illusion of return becomes at once more insistent, yet paradoxical. More and more, I want to right the wrongs I committed against people I loved; yet more than ever I acknowledge the impossibility. I can only hope I’ve been forgiven.

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