20/20 Corrected Vision (2002)

A wise man once said, “You cannot go home again.”
Another has said, “You cannot step in the same river
  twice.”
Still another has said, “When I was a child, I
  thought as a child.”
He went on to say, “Now, that I am a man, I think as
  a man.”
And some sage said, “To remain the same is to die.”
I say, “The only thing that does not change is
  change itself.”

Home is wherever we are—now.  (But we should hang
  curtains.)
Where we were once was home.  (Now it is home to
  others.)
What home was for us in the past can be no more.
  (The caterpillar outgrows its cocoon.)
Home has not changed—we have changed,
And our home must change with us.
Our home is here, now—not tomorrow…certainly not
  yesterday.
Home is not a dead memory—home is where the heart,
  mind, and soul make it.

The river of life does not stop flowing for us to
  take a step in the same place.
Each step is singular—one of many before, one of
  more to come.
There are endless steps required, and there are
  infinite rivers to cross.
Why cover familiar ground when so much of the human
  terrain remains to map?
Why seek again the same river of our souls when so
  many tributaries
Await our crossings to the ultimate destinations of
  our true selves?

Children want to remain children (and yet many of
  them want to be treated as adults):
That is common.
Birds do not want to leave the nest:
That also is common.
However, if a young bird refuses to leave the nest
  when it is time,
The mother will not hesitate to shove it out.
(Most live.)

Nature is never wrong, and if a child refuses to 
  grow, to be responsible,
Good parents and wise teachers will make sure
  childishness goes unheralded.
Such duty is required from those who are not
  children themselves,
From those neither afraid of the dangers nor the
  grandeurs of life,
Of neither the discomfort nor the frontiers of the
  expanding human landscape.
Such is the reality of parenthood, and such is the
  nature of education.
To declare this truth as heresy is to mistake that
  which is true as false.

Change is not vision lost,
However, to refuse change is to blind one’s true
  nature as the loss of vision itself.
Change is neither farsighted nor myopic—it is 20/20
  corrected vision.
Life is change, and the acceptance of change is
  vision regained.
We must continually regain our vision or we will die
  before we are fully born.

An old man living in the past is regrettable.
But a young man refusing the reality of change sees
  only the lost vision of the person
  he could have become.