Revisiting the first temple

REVISITING THE FIRST TEMPLE

- Dimension of memory and time -

I recently went to where I used to live as a child. A place where I grew up... a home where my memories are still engraved. I've been there a couple of times after we moved out, but this time I couldn't help but let my mind go back in time.

The tree where we used to sit under... and occasionally climb to harvest its fruit, the sofa next to the window where I and my brother sit while staring at the droplets of water racing to get to the bottom, the face my uncle carved on the wall, which scares me every time I walk past it, the stairs, the tile of the veranda where we used to play, the view of the factory from afar, the steep hill that takes my breath every time... 

Now, as an adult, I see the truth of the dimensions, and they feel strangely diminished. Everything has shrunk to its proper size, and in that shrinking, a piece of the magic seems to have evaporated. Looking at everything, it feels small, tiny, and not that impressive now. The tiles are too small, and the stairs aren't as I remembered them to be. The tree looks smaller, the hill less steep. It’s as if my childhood memory has painted everything on a grander, larger scale—a world perfectly tailored for the small hands and unbounded imagination of a child.

A Fleeting Glory...

It made me think of the words of the preacher, the son of David, who sought to understand all that is under heaven. The feeling is one of vanity, a sense that even the places we hold most sacred—the landscapes of our youth—are ultimately fleeting and subject to the passage of time.

It reminds me of the grandeur of the first temple built by Solomon, a structure so magnificent and vast it must have felt eternal to the people who walked its halls. Yet, even that glory, for all its cedar and gold, was temporary, a mere whisper in the centuries. The prophet Haggai speaks of the second temple, noting that its glory was not as the first, saying, “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts” ((Haggai 2:9). The prophet’s words suggest that true significance isn't found in the material scale or the impressive architecture, but in a deeper, enduring presence.

My childhood home, once the temple of my early life, now stands diminished not because its physical structure has changed, but because the perspective has shifted. The impressive scale I remember was a product of my small stature and vast innocence. Now, I see it as it truly is—a small, lovely place—and I realize the true glory was never in the size of the tiles or the steepness of the hill, but in the life and love that made the structure a home, a glory that time itself cannot diminish. That is the part of the memory that endures, even when the rest has shrunk.

Did you feel a sense of melancholy or a kind of peaceful acceptance when you realized how different the physical space felt?