Never let your hopes die

When I was twenty-nine, I dated a guy in his mid-forties. We were together for two years or so before we went our separate ways but it's something he said on one of our very first dates that has stayed with me.

"Now I'm forty-four", he said, "I've come to accept that there are things I will never achieve, ambitions I will never fulfill. I've learned to accept my place on the ladder."

I've always found that thought profoundly depressing and, as I have got older, I have started to wonder where one stops showing promise and simply becomes just the exact sum of one's parts and no more.

So, when I caught sight of this sign as I wandered through Brooklyn Heights for a story yesterday, I felt immensely reassured.