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Accumulating Experiences Is Far More Important than Accumulating More Stuff!
“Things don’t really impress me. Memories impress me. It’s not the toys, it’s the people.” — R.A. SALVATORE
In our twenties, thirties, and even forties people tend to accumulate possessions that provide status: designer clothes, a nice car, a home, a Harley, maybe even a boat. But as you get older, experiences mean much more to most people than the accumulation of more stuff. If you really think about your life, it’s defined by moments—a victory, a love, a birth, a death, a wedding, a vacation—it’s not defined by the stuff you own.
A close friend of mine died recently, having lived a rich life in every respect. Someone put together a slide show of his life for the funeral. It showed him learning to fly in the RAF in an open-cockpit plane. There were pictures of him with his kids. After that, almost all the photos—fully 80 percent of the slide show—were of him playing golf with his buddies in Scotland, Ireland, Pebble Beach, and the Caribbean. There were no photos of his million-dollar house or his hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes, although there was a couple of the TR-6 sports car he was rebuilding for two decades or more. His life, like all lives, came down to the experiences he had and the friends he made along the…