I visited my hometown after a few decades away. Contrary to popular belief, you can go home again, you just have to step out of the present. It’s all there in your mind, layer upon layer of memories, so that walking around the old town I can close my eyes and remember details of the place in another time, and remember what it was like to be a certain age, when we were all alive and didn’t know how things would turn out. That’s one of the more interesting things about living a long time. When you’re young and the future is a mystery, you can dream, make projections, set goals, hope, and aspire to enrich your life with experiences, while becoming your future self. But walking the old town now is like walking with ghosts. I’m not just in the present, but in the past, and not just one day in the past, but a past made up of all the days, like sedimentary layers, where some of the record lies buried forever, and some connections that were once hidden are now revealed. Past and present are wrapped in an embrace. But I can never see things with the same eyes I had then, the same innocence, the same ignorance, the same hopes and desires. Times change. People change. Our perceptions are filtered by circumstance and experience, and perhaps most of all by attitude, so we never become exactly who we thought we would be. Our future selves are strangers to us. Our past selves are ghosts. I’ve been fortunate. For me most of my ghosts are friendly. Chalk it up to luck, or karma, or attitude.