Examining the past and reimagining the future
Step one when preparing for the next stage of life
The goal of this newsletter is to encourage readers to think differently about retirement, to reimagine your life in retirement. To do that effectively, we must know who we are, understand where we’ve been and have a plan and purpose for where we’re going.
After writing articles for Reimagining Retirement for almost a year, I notice that I often suggest that retirement is an opportunity to look back pondering accomplishments and plan ahead imagining desires and goals. Words like examine, think, question, and consider occur in many of my posts.
The first benefit of retirement is having the time to evaluate our past, present, and future lives.
I’ve learned a thing or two about myself, the world in which we live, and the God who created it in the decades I’ve been alive, and that information helps me to look at my past objectively. Successes, failures, regrets, joys, and slapping a palm to my forehead wondering why I did some of the stupid things I did; I own it all.
As a Christian, I don’t beat myself up over my regrets and mistakes. God has forgiven me; I know that for sure. To some degree, my wins and losses have made me who I am today, and as I recognize my errors, I learn from them.
In the future, I hope to be less foolish, will attempt to be more proactive, faithfully serve those I love, and trust the Lord to give me fruitful and enjoyable work. I don’t know if I would have reached the same conclusions 15 or 20 years ago, but this stage of life gives me the opportunity to review more honestly.
Rather than restate what I’ve said before, following are excerpts of posts that carry themes of looking back, considering opportunities for the future, identity, self-knowledge, and becoming yourself.
Please check out these articles if they are of interest to you.
From Patchwork Lives to Seamless Tapestries
Retirement is an opportunity to examine the patches and to weave a new tapestry of your life. It’s a tremendous gift for those who have decades of life experience and have the health to live another few decades.
From Finish the Portrait
Imagine yourself painting the full portrait of your life, and your income earning work is a large part of it, but there is much more. Fill in the areas that have been neglected, add color to interests, define new areas of the portrait that may have never occurred to you. Finish the portrait.
From The Necessity of Work - Even in Retirement
Retirement helps us think of work differently. Our work is everything we do, it’s far more than our income producing jobs, it’s what makes us uniquely ourselves…Retirement gives us an opportunity to put the work we’ve done in different arenas of life together creatively, to find unique expressions, to do some of the same things in distinctive ways. We become more ourselves.
From Where we feel most ourselves
Retirement is a stage of life to more fully realize your identity.
After working for decades, when your identity is largely consumed by your work, retirement is the perfect opportunity to expand your identity, to try out new hobbies, different work, or even a new career. Have some fun. Experiment with creative ideas. Play with interesting hypotheses…Where do you feel most yourself? At work? In the garden? Hiking? Having dinner with friends? At church?
From Your Most Valuable Resource
Suddenly you have more time every day but, let’s be honest, fewer future days to spend it. It’s time to flip that aphorism (time is money) around and realize that the money you’ve earned while working for decades has given you time to rest, volunteer, spend time with friends and family, explore, reinvent yourself, or learn new things.
It is a tremendous gift.
We speak about spending time in the same way we do about spending money, but there is a difference. Money can be earned, invested and replaced, but time is a resource that can never be recovered. When our heads hit the pillow at night, that day is done, never to be repeated.
From Education: A Treasure at Any Age
Retirees may have the time and desire to go back to school, begin another career or just learn something new that they’ve always wanted to learn, and if you take a class or two, you will undoubtedly gain far more than information. You will potentially increase financial opportunities, interact with students of different generations, which will add to your knowledge and understanding, and you will stretch your mind.
From Become Yourself or Reinvent Yourself
Retirement gives us the chance to ask ourselves serious questions about who we were, who we have become and more importantly who we want to become. It’s not too late, for in God’s timing it’s never too late. As I’ve written before, most of us have decades left to live when we retire, and there is still purpose for us.
Examine your past, learn from it, and plan accordingly for the next stage of your life, remembering that God has a good purpose for every one of us every day. We don’t want to miss it!
Photo by Mizanur Rahman on Unsplash
Love the recap and reminders! It’s a rollercoaster for me, which I actually enjoy and continue to ride at theme parks. So maybe I’ll use that analogy when I get into a slump of regret from past experiences. It’s a frightening and slow climb back to the top, but the anticipation of the adventure ahead is also thrilling and exhilarating! That’s why I keep running back to the line to do it all over again and again!
I've been retired for over a year now and from my perspective you have great advice about this shift in how we live and structure these days stretching out before us.