Richard L. Evans wrote:
Sometimes we hear someone say, “I wish I could begin again; I wish I could live life over with what I know.” It’s not an uncommon wish, but time cannot be turned back, and in life no road can be retraveled just as once it was.
We can’t begin back where we were. But we can begin where we are, and in an eternity of existence, this is a reassuring fact. There is virtually nothing that we cannot turn away from if we really want to. There is virtually nothing that we cannot improve. There is virtually no habit that we cannot give up if we will sincerely set our will to do so and will sincerely seek and accept help—the help of others and the help of our Father in heaven.
But our interest in being better, in improving upon the past, in turning to new ways, in leaving habits behind, sometimes seems to be a wish without a will, a wish with resignation, a wish that assumes that about all we can do is wish that we could go back. There is no one who could not be better by turning towards the ways in which we should walk, however far we may have walked the wrong way.
Without the principle and possibility of repentance there would be little incentive left for any of us—for all of us need it, whether we know it or not. And though we cannot go back and begin where we were, we can begin where we are, wherever we are. No one is justified in assuming that a habit that has hold . . . is unbreakable or that a poor past performance cannot be improved.
The wish to begin again, the wish to live life over with what we know now, is a wish that cannot be realized. There is no turning back to any point or period of the past. But if we can’t begin where we were, we can begin where we are, and the memory of a wrong road is blessedly dimmed by the reality of being on the right road. ~Richard L. Evans, From the Crossroads (Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York, N.Y., 1955), 201-02 (language modernized)
