People in their 60s and 70s were right all along: 7 life lessons we’re only now beginning to understand and appreciate

The first time I realised the “oldies” might have been onto something, I was standing barefoot on hot concrete in a suburban Brisbane backyard, watching my neighbour, Ron, coax tomatoes out of soil the colour of cocoa powder. He was 72, tanned like old leather, moving slowly but with a kind of deliberate grace. My phone buzzed with yet another notification; Ron just chuckled. “You’ll miss the real show if you keep staring at that thing,” he said, nodding toward the lorikeets shrieking in the mango tree. At the time, I smiled politely. But the line stuck. Years later, when the world sped itself into a blur of apps, burnout, and endless “productivity hacks,” his words began to feel less like an old bloke’s throwaway comment and more like a small, shimmering piece of wisdom we’d somehow lost along the way.

1. Slow down: Life isn’t a race, it’s a long, strange walk

If you’ve ever sat in a country town bakery somewhere between Dubbo and Dubbo’s-barely-on-the-map cousin, you’ve probably seen it: an older couple, sharing a vanilla slice and a pot of tea, in absolutely no rush. Meanwhile, the rest of us are inhaling our flat whites, checking emails, scrolling the news, and worrying we’re already behind at 9:15am.

For decades, people in their 60s and 70s have been telling us: “Slow down, love. It all goes quick enough as it is.” We brushed it off as nostalgia. Yet, here we are, burnt out and anxious, rediscovering—through mindfulness apps and wellness retreats—the very pace they’d been quietly living all along.

They walked instead of drove, not because it looked good on a fitness tracker, but because it was cheaper, calmer, and gave them time to think. They stopped for a yarn at the shops. They lingered on verandas in the evening, letting the day settle like dust after a summer storm. There was space—between tasks, between thoughts, between ambitions.

Now, psychologists and neuroscientists are saying what our elders knew from experience: constant hurry rewires us for stress. A slower, more deliberate life doesn’t just feel better; it’s actually better for our bodies and minds. It gives us back something priceless: attention. To the world, to other people, to ourselves.

2. Community isn’t optional; it’s survival

If you grew up in Australia before the internet hit full stride, you might remember neighbourhoods that functioned a bit like extended families. Doors half-open, kids running feral until dark, someone always knowing whose turn it was to host a barbecue. In the suburbs, on farms, in regional towns—community wasn’t a buzzword; it was basic infrastructure.

Older Australians shaped their lives around it. Footy clubs, CWA halls, Men’s Sheds, church groups, bowling clubs, union meetings, surf lifesaving patrols. They knew that when things went pear-shaped—a job loss, a flood, a health scare—you didn’t just rely on government agencies. You relied on each other.

We, on the other hand, traded this in for digital “connection.” We gained thousands of online friends and lost the quiet power of someone who’ll feed your dog while you’re in hospital, or sit at your kitchen table when grief knocks the air from your lungs.

Now, with loneliness being called a public health crisis, we’re circling back to what our elders never forgot: humans are pack animals. The simple, stubborn rituals of showing up—at the local market, at a club, at a weekly catch-up—are as vital as any vitamin supplement.

Old-School Habit	What We Thought	What We’re Realising Now
Weekly club or community meet-ups	Just a social thing for retirees	Essential for mental health and resilience
Knowing your neighbours	Nice, but unnecessary	Crucial in emergencies and for belonging
Shared meals and BBQs	Casual socialising	Key to strong, supportive relationships

3. Time outdoors is not a luxury—it’s medicine

Older Australians grew up in backyards that doubled as cricket pitches, veggie patches, and makeshift wildlife sanctuaries. They fished off jetties on the Sunshine Coast, camped by rivers in the Murray–Darling Basin, and walked beaches before dawn, long before “blue mind” became a trendy term.

Ask someone in their 70s about their childhood and you’ll often hear stories that smell like damp earth and eucalyptus. Climbing trees until their legs were scratched raw. Swimming in creeks they weren’t supposed to be in. Riding bikes without helmets (questionable, yes) but feeling the rush of wind and freedom.

We moved inside. Air-conditioned, screen-lit, desk-bound. Our children’s worlds shrank to the size of a tablet. Then the research started pouring in: time in nature boosts mood, improves sleep, reduces anxiety, even lowers blood pressure. Doctors began prescribing “green time.” Urban planners rediscovered the radical idea of shade, parks, and walkable suburbs.

All the while, there’s a quiet generation of elders who never stopped stepping outside at sunrise, who still know the best walking track near their local beach or bush reserve. They remind us that you don’t have to summit a peak in Tasmania to find what you’re looking for. Sometimes it’s in the act of hanging washing on a line under a big sky, listening to magpies warble across the neighbour’s fence.

Lesson 1: Nature doesn’t need to be spectacular to be life-changing

A daily stroll along a suburban creek, tending a few pots of herbs on a balcony, sitting under a jacaranda while the blossoms fall like purple confetti—these small acts add up. Our elders never needed a smartwatch to tell them their heart rate dropped when they sat by the ocean. They just knew they felt better, clearer, lighter. The “evidence” came from the way they slept that night.

4. Money is a tool, not a scoreboard

Many of today’s 60- and 70-somethings grew up with far less material abundance than the average modern household. Hand-me-down clothes, patched sheets, second-hand furniture, holidays that meant driving to a cousin’s place two towns over. They saved, mended, shared, repurposed. Money was important, absolutely—but mainly as a way to buy time, security, and modest comfort, not as a way to perform success.

Then came the credit boom, the housing frenzy, the endless feeds of other people’s renovations and luxury escapes. We started measuring ourselves against impossible standards. The pressure to “have it all by 30” became almost comical and crushing at the same time.

Listen to older Australians talk about what they actually value now, and the picture shifts. They talk about the joy of being debt-free, of having a simple place that’s truly theirs. They talk about experiences—a long lunch with mates, a road trip up the coast, spoiling the grandkids just a little bit. They talk about health with a seriousness money can’t buy.

Lesson 2: Enough is a superpower

Our elders remind us that the moment you decide what “enough” looks like, you win back your life. You stop racing a race designed by marketers and start living one shaped by your own values. A smaller home near family, a beat-up ute that still runs, a basic wardrobe that works—these can be deliberate, joyful choices, not compromises.

5. Relationships outlast resolutions, careers, and trends

In a world obsessed with self-improvement, older Australians have quietly been living a different kind of wisdom: self is important, yes, but it’s woven through a web of people. The mates who knew you before you “made it.” The partner who saw you through redundancies, illnesses, the rough bits no one posts online. The siblings you still argue with, but who show up without being asked.

People in their 60s and 70s talk about funerals a lot more than the rest of us. Not because they’re morbid, but because by their age, they’ve attended a lot of them. They’ve watched what happens at the end of the story, when the job titles and Instagram feeds no longer matter. Who’s in the front row, holding each other’s hands? That’s the answer to the question: What really counted?

Lesson 3: Small, consistent gestures build lifetime bonds

Our elders didn’t maintain friendships with grand gestures. They called. They wrote. They turned up. They remembered birthdays without relying on social media prompts. They invited, even when they knew half the people might say no. And when relationships broke, they often tried, quietly and imperfectly, to mend them.

We’re only starting to understand how deeply this matters for long-term health and happiness. Study after study now shows what Nan could’ve told us from her lounge chair: the quality of your relationships is one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing in later life. Not your salary. Not your step count. The people who laugh with you and check in when things go sideways.

6. Kindness and manners were never old-fashioned

“Say please.” “Say thank you.” “Ring your grandmother.” “Don’t arrive empty-handed.” Many of us heard these phrases enough growing up that they turned into background noise. Politeness could feel stiff, a bit daggy, almost performative.

But think about the last time someone let you merge in peak-hour traffic, or held a door when your hands were full, or looked you in the eye and genuinely asked how you were going—and waited for more than a one-word answer. Those small acts land differently now. They feel almost radical.

Older Australians have long practiced a quiet code: look after each other, don’t make life harder than it needs to be, treat the cleaner the same way you treat the CEO. It’s not about being prim or perfect. It’s about acknowledging that, on this big island, we’re all sharing the same scorching summers, the same unpredictable floods, the same bushfire smoke. A little softness goes a long way.

Lesson 4: Respect is a daily practice, not a slogan

We run workshops on “emotional intelligence” and “workplace culture,” but much of it boils down to things your Pop already knew: listen more than you talk, apologise when you’re wrong, share credit, don’t talk down to people. These simple, almost old-fashioned behaviours create the sort of world most of us say we want to live in.

7. Age is not the end of the story; it’s a different chapter entirely

Somewhere along the way, we absorbed a quiet fear: that life shrinks after 60, that adventure and relevance belong to the young. But look around modern Australia and you’ll find a different truth. The woman in her late 60s learning to surf at Burleigh. The 73-year-old volunteering to restore bushland on the outskirts of Perth. The granddad in Newcastle who just took up oil painting and fills his house with wild, colour-splashed canvases.

Older generations tried to tell us this too, in their own ways. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” they’d say. We heard it as condescension. Maybe it was, sometimes. But more often, it was a promise: that there are forms of freedom, perspective, and courage that only arrive after you’ve lived through enough cycles of gain and loss, hope and disappointment, love and its many shapes.

Lesson 5: We need elders, not just “older people”

In many First Nations cultures, Elders are treasured as holders of knowledge, story, and spiritual authority. Mainstream Australia has been slower to embrace this idea, often sidelining older people as “past it.” But as we grapple with climate anxiety, social fragmentation, and a culture of permanent urgency, the role of elders—listeners, storytellers, living reminders of longer timelines—has never been more vital.

Those in their 60s and 70s who have watched fashions, governments, and economic booms rise and fall have something rare to offer: context. They can say, with the weight of experience, “We’ve been through hard things before. Here’s what helped. Here’s what didn’t. Here’s what we learned.”

Maybe the real shift we need isn’t to idolise youth or idealise age, but to weave them together. To sit on verandas and around kitchen tables again, listening to stories that smell like engine grease, sea salt, hospital corridors, red dirt, wet lawn clippings. To treat our elders not as background characters, but as co-authors of the world we’re still writing.

Because the secret, quietly humming beneath all their advice, is this: life was never supposed to be optimised, perfected, or hacked. It was always meant to be lived—messy, slow, shared, under big skies and small roofs—with as much courage and kindness as we can manage. And in that, the people in their 60s and 70s might just have been right all along.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do people in their 60s and 70s seem more relaxed about life?

They’ve lived through enough change, loss, and surprise to know that most crises pass, most mistakes can be survived, and very little is worth sacrificing your health and relationships over. Perspective, gained over decades, naturally softens the edges of everyday stress.

How can younger Australians learn from older generations in practical ways?

Start small and personal: visit or call older relatives regularly, ask about their early life, invite them to share skills (cooking, gardening, repairs), and involve them in family decisions. In your community, join mixed-age groups—Men’s Sheds, local clubs, volunteer projects—where intergenerational conversations happen naturally.

What if my relationship with my parents or grandparents is strained?

You don’t have to force closeness, but you can experiment with low-pressure contact: a short message, a photo, a simple question about their past. If that’s not safe or healthy, look for “chosen elders” in your community—older neighbours, mentors, or volunteers—who can offer the same kind of perspective without the baggage.

Is it too late to apply these lessons if I’m already in my 40s or 50s?

No. Many of the elders we admire made their biggest changes later in life—downsizing, reconnecting with friends, joining community groups, or rediscovering nature. The shift usually starts with small choices: saying no to one extra commitment, taking a daily walk, or prioritising a weekly catch-up with someone who matters.

How can we better value older people in Australian society?

We can challenge ageist jokes and assumptions, include older voices in workplace and community decisions, design more accessible public spaces, and consciously seek out stories and media that feature older Australians as complex, active people. Above all, we can offer what many say they want most: time, respect, and the chance to contribute.