Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote that “it is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

I must be a romantic because I love Marquez and his writing so much, and he believed strongly that romance was not the exclusive province of the very young. I think that for me, the loss of dreams would be the first death, perhaps the most painful one. I have never stopped dreaming, and hope I never will. I can’t imagine a life without dreams. Sometimes they come true. I always dreamed of being a writer. Of having work that I love. Of having a great love. Of living in a beautiful space. Of having a wonderful daughter.

For most of my life, I never imagined so many of my dreams would come true. Or that I would suffer so much pain and loss in the pursuit of them. That, then, is the glory and mystery of life.

Marquez is wonderfully right, I think. I do not measure age in years or wrinkles, or in sore knees. The fastest way I can imagine to grow old is to give up the pursuit of our dreams.