Sometimes I wonder if our grandparents had life figured out in ways we did not appreciate when they were around.
Not everything, of course. They had their own problems, their own beliefs and plenty of things we would probably disagree with today. But there were certain things they seemed to understand without needing books, podcasts or motivational speeches to explain them.
Take privacy, for example.
Our grandparents could have a whole life that nobody outside their immediate circle knew about. Not because they were deliberately mysterious, but because not everything needed to be shared.
You could have an argument with your husband and the whole neighbourhood did not need to know. You could receive money and nobody needed to see it. You could be planning a trip without posting a countdown weeks before you left.
Today, we have made sharing almost automatic.
Something happens and our first instinct can be to take a picture, record it or tell somebody about it. Sometimes, before we have even experienced a moment properly, we are already thinking about how it will look on a screen.
Our grandparents did not have that problem.
And maybe there was something nice about having parts of your life that belonged only to you.
They also seemed to have a different understanding of time.
If something broke, you fixed it. If you wanted something expensive, you saved for it. If you planted something, you waited for it to grow.
There was no Amazon delivery arriving tomorrow. No food arriving at your doorstep in 20 minutes. No message disappearing into the ether because somebody had not replied for three hours.
Things took time.
I think we have become so accustomed to convenience that waiting can now feel like a personal inconvenience.
We want results quickly. We want to know immediately whether something is going to work. We want relationships to make sense immediately, careers to take off immediately and money to come quickly.
Our grandparents seemed more comfortable with the fact that some things simply take time.
They also knew how to make things last.
A shirt did not necessarily become useless because it was no longer new. Furniture could be repaired. Containers could be washed and reused. Leftover food was not automatically something to throw away.
There was a practical attitude towards possessions that I find interesting.
Today, we can replace something before we have even considered repairing it. Sometimes the problem isn’t that something is unusable. It is simply that something newer has caught our attention.
And advertising does not exactly help.
Everywhere we look, we are being told what we should have next.
A better phone. A better car. Better clothes. A better holiday. A better-looking home.
It can be difficult to feel content when there is always something else to want.
Our grandparents did not have social media constantly showing them what everybody else was doing.
Imagine that.
You could be happy with your life without knowing that somebody your age had just bought a house in Dubai.
You could have an ordinary weekend without seeing somebody else’s luxury getaway.
You could be doing perfectly well and never have to compare your life with hundreds of strangers before breakfast.
Maybe that is part of why contentment seemed a little easier.
Then there was community.
I remember how much more ordinary it used to be for people to know their neighbours. Someone could knock on your door without sending a WhatsApp message first. Food could be shared. Children belonged, in a sense, to the wider community, and there was always somebody who knew somebody who knew your family.
Of course, there was a downside to that too. Privacy was not always respected, and sometimes everybody knowing your business was exactly the problem.
But there was also a sense that people were responsible for one another.
If someone was sick, you went to see them.
If there was a funeral, people showed up.
If someone needed help, you did not necessarily need to schedule a meeting to discuss it.
You simply went.
I think we still do these things, but sometimes they have become more complicated than they need to be.
We can send a message saying, “I’m so sorry to hear this,” and never actually visit.
We can post birthday wishes to someone we have not spoken to in months.
We can see that a friend is struggling and tell ourselves we will call them later.
Our grandparents were not necessarily better people. They just lived in a world where showing up was often the most natural response.
And perhaps they understood something else that we are still learning: not every disagreement needs to become a permanent break.
Today, it can sometimes feel as though one argument is enough to end a friendship. One misunderstanding can become a family feud. Someone says something we do not like and suddenly the relationship is over.
Our grandparents had disagreements too. Plenty of them.
But when you live in a smaller community, belong to the same family and expect to see people again and again, there is sometimes a greater incentive to find a way forward.
You cannot block your auntie in real life.
At some point, you still have to attend the same funeral.
That does not mean we should tolerate disrespect or remain in unhealthy relationships. It simply means that not every disagreement has to become a declaration of war.
There is also something I admire about the way many of them approached money.
They were not necessarily wealthy, but they understood the importance of having something put away.
There was less temptation to turn every pay cheque into a shopping opportunity. Saving was not always about having a sophisticated investment strategy. Sometimes it was simply about knowing that tomorrow might not look like today.
We have more financial tools now. We have more access to information. We also have more ways to spend money than they ever did.
And perhaps that is the problem.
It is easier to spend when everything is one click away.
Then there is rest.
This one may be the hardest for our generation.
Our grandparents could sit outside in the evening and talk. They could spend time doing absolutely nothing without feeling that they were falling behind.
We seem to have forgotten how to do nothing.
If we are not working, we are scrolling. If we are not scrolling, we are watching something. If we are not doing either, we start thinking about what we should be doing.
We have somehow turned rest into something we have to earn.
Maybe our grandparents understood that life is not meant to be one long productivity challenge.
Of course, I do not want to romanticise the past.
There were things about their generation that we should not bring back. Some attitudes were restrictive. Some traditions deserve to be questioned. And technology has genuinely made many parts of life better.
But progress does not have to mean forgetting everything that came before us.
We can enjoy the convenience of modern life and still learn to be patient.
We can use social media and still keep some things private.
We can buy new things and still repair what can be repaired.
We can be ambitious and still know when to rest.
We can disagree with people without immediately deciding they no longer belong in our lives.
And maybe most importantly, we can remember that a good life does not always have to look impressive.
Our grandparents may not have had everything we have today.
But perhaps some of them had something we are struggling to find now:
the ability to be satisfied with enough.
Maybe they knew something we are only beginning to understand.
That life does not always have to be faster.
It does not always have to be bigger.
And it certainly does not always have to be seen.
Sometimes, it just has to be lived.