Meaning: If you try to return to a place from your past it won't be the same as
it was.
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It sounds like another version of "one does not step in the same river twice."
My friend Bill used to be a sucker for many useless sentimental songs rehashing
similar ideas, e.g., "you can no longer go back to the past." He couldn't get
enough of the tear-jerking lyrics delivered in simple yet bitter-sweet melodies.
Invariably, they seemed to tell him that he was the victim, the abandoned, the
rejected, and the disinherited and he was entitled to indulge in self-pity. For
a naive, senstitive youth with some inferiority complex, that music was as
powerful as bolts of lightning and as addictive as a drug.
In comparision, the epitaph of the pagan philosopher Epictetus should cheer everyone up:
Here lies Epictetus,
a slave maimed in body,
the ultimate in poverty,
and favored by the gods.
