Reflections on Another Trip Around the Sun: Lessons Learned at 69

It’s always good to start another journey around the sun, as I did on Friday.

As for me, I am nudging up against Moses’s “three-score-and-ten” boundary. Using Oliver Burkeman’s math, I have lived 3600 out of the average 4000 weeks.

For several years, I used my birthday to give “reflections about what I have learned.” On my 65th birthday, I had sixty-five.

One year ago, I was selling my library, cleaning out my office, and making retirement plans. I know that perspective changes in “ginormous” changes (my grandchildren’s word!).

Let me share a few random thoughts I have learned in a year.

1. Retirement is hard. Many say retirement is taking life easy. But then life slaps you. Discover why you get up in the morning and how to keep your mind active. I now know it is not shutting an office door and getting out the fishing rod. It’s like getting lost in a maze without a map. And I am still in the middle.
2. In churches, get your priorities straight. Faith over finances. People over programs. Brothers over buildings. The less-important things never get you to heaven.
3. Care for others before yourself. Then, you care for yourself. Life is a boomerang.
4. Relish each day for they slip by like sand through fingers. Every funeral I do reinforces this truth.
5. Do something difficult every day. You don’t get stronger doing easy things.
6. Get up from chairs without pushing on arms and get up from the floor without help. The little things keep you mobile.
7. Learning is not about information but understanding so you can explain it to another.
8. Your body has to carry you to the end of life. Take care of it.
9. Smile more often because age can make you cranky.
10. Focus on contribution rather than competition. Our thirst for affirmation from others is a cup of hemlock. Make the lives of others better.
11. Create more, consume less. I spend too much time on devices dulling my senses. Use the brain that God gave me to teach, prod, and build.
12. Never start the day or end the day without writing down 10 things for which you are thankful. A thankful heart is a happy heart.
13. Remember, God gives you another year not as a bonus but to bless others. Be a good steward and use it the way God intended.

Here’s to another year!