In Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote that “he allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

I have been born again and again and each time, I have found something to love. I believe we are living in a time of rebirth when life obliges us to give birth to ourselves again.

This is so very true of me at the age of 72, the Pandemic is asking me, as my life has so often done, be born again, and find something new to love.

Marquez and his writing have touched me more than any other novelist I’ve read, he and I shared the same feelings about growing older: “It is not true,” he wrote, “that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

I believe they need to break us down when we get older so that we can pay them to buy expensive medicines we don’t need and operations we shouldn’t want, and convince us that we can no longer care for ourselves,  and leave our dreams behind with our dogs and cats so they can hide us away and out of sight.

I remember dreaming for the first time when I was a young boy, lying in my urine-soaked bed all night because I was afraid to get up and call attention to myself. I couldn’t bear another lecture from my father about how weak and disappointing I was.

This was one of the great gifts of my life because I began to dream of things, and never stopped dreaming of things and those dreams became my stories, and those stories became my life.

And then, to my shock and bewilderment, so many of those dreams began to come true – my books, my pictures, Maria, my dogs, my farms my blog.

Most of my friends are younger than I am, and I sometimes wonder if this is because most of the friends I might have who are my age are beginning to die, or are already gone.

When we get older, we are taught to let go of our dreams, give up on love scale back our lives to irrelevance and invisibility.

A good friend of mine, Steve, a creative and active man, called me a month ago to tell me he was giving up writing and teaching, selling his house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and moving to a condominium on the west coast of Florida.

“I can’t take any more New England winters,” he said.

“Really?,” I said, “I’ve known you for years and every time I spoke with you, you talked about your dream of moving to Vermont when you got older so you could ski and fish and hike in the woods and sit by a blazing wood stove in the winter with a glass of brandy and a Labrador Retriever at your feet.”

He cleared his throat, and kind of blew me off (I have a great genius for making people uncomfortable) and said hurriedly, “oh yes, but I’m too old to pursue my dreams now.  That’s a kid’s game. I have to live my age. Up here, I’ll just fall down one day and break my hip or ski into a tree. I don’t want any artificial parts.”

He had given up his dreams, I thought, he has grown old, just like Marquez said. He never seemed old to be before that phone call.

I know the sound of giving up one’s dreams. It is soft and mournful, like a flute off in the forest, and usually, irreversible.

I have this sinking feeling one of our mutual friends will be sending me my friend’s obituary in a few months or a year. I’ve known a number of people who gave up on their dreams and I don’t think most of them are still alive.

Dreams are life, dreams are hope, hope is the will to live, dreams are the fuel.

I can’t say what other people should do, but I know what I need to do.

I need to keep on pursuing my dreams.

I’m living a lot of my dreams. Maria is one, so is my blog. So is my farm, so is Zinnia, Bud, and Fate. So was Red. So are Lulu and Fanny. My photography for sure.  My farm and my books.

My daughter is living my dream for her:  to live independently and lovingly without my hovering over her life.

I think when one gets older, life tends to form around forks in the road.  The spirit goes one way, the body goes another. I can’t control my body, it has its own path.

My spirit belongs to me.

My head is full of dreams I am eager to pursue.

When I stop pursuing my dreams, I will be dead already.

There is always something to love. Each time I dream, I have always found something to love.