Driving back to my alma mater two weeks ago brought the twin sensations of wanting the familiarity to make me feel comfortable and for new things to inspire me. I parked my car where I had parked it when I lived in that same dorm 25 years earlier.

New buildings and renovations pushed against my nostalgia, rendering the old familiarity more tenuous. To my left was an entire structure, multiple stories, the grandest of homes, where there was just parking lot.

I felt pulled in different directions by emotions. I wanted it to be the same. And yet, I was excited by development and growth, too. That grand building, Wright Hall, looks good there. I would stay there.

Our bodies ache when we return home, don’t they? A twin longing to be back there and yet, also here, now.

Like the campus, much about me has changed. I am not who I was. But that previous person is still in there, isn’t he? Still part of me.

What I think we long to name is that grasp of what feels eternal and changeless. Who feels the same as that 18 year-old, even when we know we aren’t. We need a language for that through line of change, of growth, of becoming and coming home.