When we are young, our dreams are big and exciting, and we believe we will realize them all. We will have our own prestigious law firm, be a renowned surgeon, a media superstar, president of the corporation, Nobel Prize winning scientist, sing like (Pavarotti), dance like (Fred Astaire), write like Camus, paint like Wyeth, and play golf like Jack Nicklaus. Every young couple who gets married is sure that theirs is going to be the ideal marriage, the perfect union. We don't have to dispute such dreaming, nor disparage ambition and idealism. In fact, give me an idealist any day over a cynic especially a 21-year-old cynic.

Yet, those who have weathered turnings of the seasons know that between the dream and the reality falleth the shadow, as T. S. Eliot observed. Along about age 30 or 35, that shadow descends, and we (may) learn that we do not possess the gifts we imagined we had, that we are not going to sing, paint, or play golf like anyone but ourselves. This is the time when we become too old to be young, and are still too young to be old; time when we must saddle our dreams and accept the fact that some of them will not come true, that certain ambitions will not be met.