You Can’t Go Back – Sunday, August 08, 1943
It is probably that most of us at times cherish the thought that we would like to go back—back to try over—back to enjoy once again the reality of some of our memories—back to places long unseen—to places and things that look large and great in remembrance. That haystack on the old farm was surely much higher than you say. That green lane down through the willows was much longer and more beautiful than this. And that high fence in the city and the tree we climbed to look over it—surely they were a large and important part of the universe. And the old house had unexplored possibilities—with eaves and dens behind the sofa and in the closet—and untold mysteries in that deep cellar and up in that beckoning yet forbidding attic. Why, that house couldn’t have been as small as now you say it is. Surely it couldn’t be I who have changed.
I remember these things, and they were real, and they are real now where I keep them in remembrance. And all those things we used to do and think and feel before life put its heavy hand upon us—where and how did we lose them? Perhaps some of the values we had in childhood were safer and better than some of the values we have acquired since then. Perhaps the things that we remember haven’t changed so much. Perhaps the change has been in us. But we can’t go back. Oh, of course, you may possibly go back to the scenes of your childhood, and you may expect to find in them all that you found in them then, but I’m afraid you’ll find that they seem to have shrunk, somehow—that they don’t look the same. I’m afraid you’ll find that it isn’t just old and familiar scenes so much as it is childhood itself you are looking for—and that, I’m afraid, you can’t have. Not now. You can’t go back even to find out if that’s what you want. And really I think you wouldn’t want to. But perhaps there is something you’d like to make right back there. Something you wouldn’t have done if you had known what you know now. But you can’t go back—not even for that. And it’s just as well. The things back there belong back there—and we can’t go back any more than the world we live in can go back. And no matter what doors regretfully are closed behind, no matter what past we have been reaching for, our efforts at recovery had better turn about to face the present and the future—to begin to work it out today and tomorrow.
Call it repentance if you want to, give it any name you please—but the best thing we can do is to make sure we are traveling in the right direction beginning now. The Father of all men has said that progress may be everlasting, and that “men are that they might have joy.” There is nothing back there for anyone, but there are limitless possibilities ahead, now and forevermore. But you can’t go back—-don’t try to.
By Richard L. Evans, spoken from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, Aug. 8, 1943, over Radio Station KSL and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System. Copyright – 1943.
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August 08, 1943
Broadcast Number 0,729