Last week I returned to Athens after a nine-year absence. Moving on to other things, I rarely had thought about that afternoon in Athens, only recalling it when someone mentioned that they were going to Athens or had just returned from there. I’d tell them to be sure and go to Aphrodite or ask them if they’d been there. I thought of it occasionally during my travels to other counties where the shopping experience consisted of haggling for the lowest price and little else. Once again I was in search of a pair of earrings for my wife. My new embassy contact informed me that, unfortunately, George’s father-in-law had died the day before and George would not be at the shop when we arrived as he would be making preparations to go out of town for the funeral.

To our surprise, however, when we arrived at Aphrodite, George was waiting for us. Not because he remembered me. He didn’t, and I hadn’t expected him to. After all, I had been only one of thousands of American customers to visit his shop over the years. George was there because our mutual friend had told him he was bringing another visitor from the U.S. government by the shop, and George wanted to be a good host.

I told George of my previous visit and how I had kept the business card he had given me in 1997 in case I ever returned to Athens. I bought my earrings and spent some time talking to him and sipping a cool drink. George told me about his father-in-law, and he invited us to join him for something to eat and a glass of wine nearby. I expressed my condolences for the loss of his father-in-law, thanked him, and told him it wasn’t necessary. 

I knew he had more important things to do. I thanked him again, said goodbye, and headed off down the street, returning to Aphrodite again briefly later in the day to meet up with the three other people traveling with me from Washington who had gone there separately. Sure enough, I found them talking to George, who was in the midst of recommending a nearby café to them. They gathered up their purchases, I said goodbye to George again, and we followed the man George sent to escort us to a nearby café where we enjoyed a meal rivaling the one I shared with George and his friends nine years earlier. I departed Athens the next day having enjoyed my second visit to Athens as much as I had the first.

I tell you this simple story because it argues against the axiom that you can never go back. Things and people change. Time moves on. You can never replicate the experience of a certain place or repeat that moment in time when your life and someone else’s intersect, however briefly, and the experience enriches you. 

How often have you wanted to go back and revisit someone or someplace in your past you remember fondly only to discover when you did that it or they didn’t live up to your expectations? The place, the people, the situation had long since changed. There’s the town you grew up in and moved away from. There’s the friend or classmate you once knew and haven’t seen for many years. Or perhaps, like Athens, it’s a place you once visited, a person you once met. 

I’ve frequently been disappointed when I’ve tried to recapture a piece of the past. Most every place I have good memories about from my past wasn’t the same when I returned there. On this recent trip to Athens even my visit to something as timeless as the Acropolis wasn’t the same as before. I looked forward to seeing it again. I didn’t have a camera with me the first time, and I wanted to take plenty of pictures. But this time the crush of thousands of tourists and the scaffolding and construction equipment used in renovating the site detracted from the experience. I may never have the opportunity to see it again. My first visit in 1997, with only a handful of other people around, will remain my lasting memory of it.

But sometimes, for whatever reasons, things and people don’t change. They age, of course, as do we, but they don’t necessarily change. When this happens, it can be a stroke of good fortune. You can go back. You can repeat, or nearly repeat, some experiences. Unfortunately it’s a rarity. But when it happens it’s a good thing. Enjoy it.