When you stop dreaming

.
I guess I've been a dreamer for about as long as I can remember.  As a young boy, I'd thumb through the Sears catalog.  It seemed they had the answers to all my dreams, including a Honda moped with at top speed of 33mph that I believed would take me across the United States.  Well, the moped I wanted never actually materialized, but some 50 years later a Harley Davidson and a Motor Home with which I travelled America the past few years.

My dad was a career soldier.  Aside from the Army, he had second and third jobs to provide for Mom and her six kids. We never really had a home we could call our own, but when he retired in the late 70's, I saw the product of his hard work and the value of a pension.  So I dreamed of that. 

And from that day forward I followed his lead.  Got a wife and some kids of my own.  A house to raise them and a job that could support my goal of retiring before my health ran out.  And so it was.  My dreams materialized.  And I still dream, and they still come true.

Not so with today's generation it seems.  Children being given everything they ask for.  Few are ever held accountable.  Most are liars.  Some go to school only to do drugs or play sports.  Most grab irrelevant subjects in college and soon return home to again be coddled by their parents.  Government entitlements permit them to survive until they die.  Some sooner than later.  Some never having a dream fulfilled.

And so it is, especially in third world countries where there is endless violence and hunger.  Where most kids never have a dream long enough to experience it.  The just don't care and they join the hoards of others just like them.  All without a dream.  And the few that did, stopped.
     
What’s this got to do with you and me? A lot of people in America sleepwalk through life having no real dreams. Somewhere along the line we’ve lied to ourselves and believed a lie that chasing dreams is for kids, that we’re grown-ups now, that we need to make the best with what we have, just get through this day and forget about tomorrow.

And nothing could be further from the Truth.  You see, when you stop dreaming, you begin to die.
.