Create New Memories in Retirement

Reaching retirement age is a true blessing and it’s something we never take for granted.  We’ve seen too many of our friends die before they were able to enjoy the fruits of the working years.  My advice, however, is to create new memories in retirement.  Hopefully, you reach this age with many wonderful memories and it’s fun to recall the people and places that have formed the fabric of your life.  But that doesn't mean you can’t go out and create new memories and keep writing your life story.  Anyone who gets to escape the working world and enjoy life should embrace their past but look forward to creating an exciting future.  When you look back at all you’ve lived through, it’s amazing to have been a witness to it all.  I vividly remember asking my parents and grandparents questions about the Depression and the Second World War and becoming fascinated with those periods in history.  The fact is that we’ve lived through some pretty amazing events ourselves and the thing to keep in mind is that we’re not through yet.  We can make the rest of our lives as exciting as we want it to be.

Travel has been our passion, and we love to see different parts of our country and the world.  It makes everything we see and read about more real.  We have become more appreciative of different cultures and different regions.  The first time we heard someone talk about climate change as something that was affecting their daily life was a tour of the windmills just outside of Amsterdam in 2006.  The guide said that they had been charting water levels for decades and the results are getting worse each year. A tour of a California vineyard about ten years after that led us to a winery owner who was spending a fortune to find ways to negate the impact of warming temperatures.  It made a very big impression to hear an everyday person say how a global phenomenon was impacting their lives every day.  These conversations are part of the learning process that has taken place in our travels and helped us create new memories in retirement.  Fortunately, there were more pleasant ones than the ones I just listed.

Visiting new places will help create new memories in Retirement

Watching regional folk dances and the sheer joy of the participants was something that has stayed with us and is now a part of our conversation.  And that’s the magic of memories.  They expand our knowledge and perspectives.  It’s nice to enjoy your home and local town.  It’s nice to have a favorite local restaurant.  But there’s something to be said about expanding your horizons. When we were working and after the kids had gone off to college, our big treat was a weekend in New York City where we would see a show (my wife loves the theater) and have a couple of nice meals in our favorite restaurant.  They were extremely friendly and greeted us by name from our second visit.  The food was sensational and the experience with our waiter and the staff was just as good.  We now travel south in the winter and have new friends in new favorite restaurants and that’s a big part of the fun of traveling.  You come to realize that almost everyone wants the same thing in life and meeting new people and enjoying their company is part of that.

It’s one of the great satisfactions in life to see your children appreciate what they experienced in growing up and become determined to make their own memories.  We love visiting them and hearing what they’re up to.  Visiting their favorite restaurants is part of the experience.  Seeing them enjoy their lives and appreciating new experiences is quite rewarding.  Whenever we’re with them we create new memories in retirement and make plans for future trips and experiences.  It is not a surprise that each of them enjoy traveling and, if we’re blessed with grandchildren, that will open up a whole new chapter.  They love talking about memories of growing up and that is especially true of Christmas and vacations and all of us are determined to make new memories each year.

If I could give one piece of advice and know that people would follow it, it would be to never stop living.  Retirement is a great time for appreciating all that you have but you should never stop looking to the future.  Every day should be thought of as another chance to create new memories in retirement. There are too many new foods to try and new restaurants to experience.  There are too many new people to meet and too many new places to see to just be content with your memories of the past.  It’s time to create new ones.  It’s time to Enjoy Retired Life!

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