After spending weeks with these remarkable elders, I discovered their regrets weren't about missed vacations or unfinished bucket lists—they were urgent warnings about the fleeting window of opportunity that most of us completely waste.
Add VegOut to your Google News feed. 
Last month, I found myself sitting in a sunlit community center, the smell of Earl Grey tea mixing with old leather chairs. Across from me sat Margaret, 92, her weathered hands wrapped around a ceramic mug as she leaned forward with surprising intensity.
"You want to know what I wish I'd done differently in my seventies?" she asked, her voice carrying decades of wisdom. "I'll tell you exactly what I should have done."
Over the next few weeks, I interviewed 20 people in their nineties, asking them all the same question: What do you regret most about your seventies?
The answers that came back weren't what I expected. No one talked about traveling more or buying that dream car. Instead, five specific regrets kept surfacing, each one a lesson in what truly matters as we age.
These aren't just stories from strangers. They're warnings from people who've lived through what many of us will face, and they're desperate for us to learn from their mistakes.
1. Not staying physically active when they still could
"I thought seventy was old," one gentleman told me, shaking his head. "So I acted old. Stopped my morning walks, quit swimming. By eighty, my body had forgotten how to move properly."
This was the most common regret by far. Nearly every person I spoke with mentioned some version of physical decline that started with voluntary inactivity in their seventies.
The thing is, your seventies might be the last decade where your body still responds well to exercise. You can still build muscle, improve balance, and maintain cardiovascular health. But once you let it slip, getting it back becomes exponentially harder.
One woman described how she gave up yoga at 72 because she felt "too stiff." Now at 94, she needs help getting dressed. "Those yoga classes were keeping me flexible," she said. "I just didn't realize it until it was too late."
What struck me was how preventable this regret seemed. It wasn't about running marathons or lifting heavy weights. The people who stayed active into their nineties talked about simple, consistent movement. Daily walks. Gentle stretching. Swimming. Dancing in their living rooms.
They understood something fundamental about aging: motion is lotion for your joints, and the moment you stop moving is the moment you start declining rapidly.
2. Not deepening their spiritual practice
"I had all this time suddenly," a retired teacher explained. "But instead of going deeper into what gave my life meaning, I just watched TV and worried about things I couldn't control."
This surprised me at first, but it makes sense. Your seventies often bring the first real taste of mortality. Friends start passing away. Health issues become more common. The big questions about meaning and purpose become impossible to ignore.
The people who developed or deepened a spiritual practice in their seventies seemed more at peace in their nineties. They had a framework for understanding loss, change, and their own mortality.
In my book [Hidden Secrets of Buddhism: How To Live With Maximum Impact and Minimum Ego](https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Secrets-Buddhism-Maximum-Minimum-ebook/dp/B0BD15Q9WF), I explore how Buddhist principles can help us navigate life's challenges. The concept of impermanence, which I've personally used to handle stress, becomes especially relevant as we age.
One woman told me she started meditating at 75 and wished she'd started at 70. "Those five years of anxiety and fear could have been five years of peace," she said.
It doesn't have to be meditation or Buddhism. Several people mentioned regretting not being more involved in their church, not studying philosophy, or not exploring what they truly believed about life and death.
3. Playing it too safe with their money
This one caught me completely off guard.
"I saved every penny for my eighties and nineties," one man explained, gesturing around his modest assisted living apartment. "But now I can't travel, can't eat the foods I want, can barely leave this room. What am I saving for now?"
Person after person expressed regret about being too conservative with their spending in their seventies, when they were still healthy enough to enjoy it.
They skipped trips with friends who are now gone. They didn't buy the comfortable car that would have made driving easier. They ate cheap, processed food instead of nourishing their bodies with quality nutrition.
One woman summed it up perfectly: "I was so afraid of running out of money that I ran out of life instead."
The ironic part? Many of them now have more money than they can spend, but no capacity to enjoy it. Their knees won't handle travel. Their digestion can't handle restaurants. Their energy won't sustain long visits with grandchildren.
This isn't about being reckless with money. It's about recognizing that your seventies might be your last chance to actively use your resources for experiences and health improvements that actually matter.
4. Not telling their stories
"My grandchildren don't know who I really am," one woman said, tears forming in her eyes. "They know me as grandma, but they don't know about my adventures, my struggles, how I met their grandfather, what life was like before they were born."
The regret of not documenting or sharing their life stories came up repeatedly. In their seventies, they still had clear memories, energy to write or record, and the perspective to know what mattered.
Now, many struggle with memory issues or lack the energy for long conversations. Their stories, the family history, the lessons learned through decades of living, risk being lost forever.
One man showed me a half-finished memoir he started at 79. "I thought I had more time," he said. "Always thought I'd finish it next year."
This resonates with me personally. Through my wife's Vietnamese family, I've learned how cultures that prioritize elder respect naturally create space for these stories. But in Western culture, we often wait too long to ask, and they wait too long to tell.
5. Holding onto grudges and not reconciling
"I haven't spoken to my brother in twenty years," a woman told me, then paused. "I can't even remember what we fought about."
This regret carried the most emotional weight. People in their nineties talked about siblings, children, and old friends they'd cut off or been cut off from during their seventies. Pride, stubbornness, or the illusion of unlimited time kept them from reaching out.
Now, many of those people are gone, taking any chance of reconciliation with them.
One man described refusing to attend his daughter's wedding because he disapproved of her partner. "They've been married fifteen years now," he said. "Happy. Three kids I barely know. And for what? Because I thought I knew better?"
The seventies, they explained, are when you still have the energy and clarity to have difficult conversations, to travel for reunions, to rebuild burned bridges. Wait until your eighties or nineties, and those opportunities often vanish.
Final words
Listening to these ninety-somethings, I kept thinking about a Buddhist teaching on impermanence that's helped me through tough times: everything changes, nothing lasts forever.
But these elders showed me the flip side of that wisdom. Yes, difficulties pass, but so do opportunities. So does health. So do the people we love.
Your seventies aren't your final act; they're your second-to-last chance to live fully. They're the decade when you still have enough health to be active, enough clarity to deepen your spiritual practice, enough time to reconcile and tell your stories.
The people I interviewed weren't sharing these regrets to depress us. They were offering us a gift: the chance to learn from their mistakes before we make them ourselves.
If you're in your seventies now, consider this your wake-up call. If you're younger, start preparing now. Build those exercise habits, deepen that spiritual practice, plan for meaningful spending, document your stories, and heal those relationships.
Because one day, if we're lucky, we'll be ninety-something too. The question is: will we be sharing regrets or gratitude about how we spent our seventies?
Just launched: Laughing in the Face of Chaos by Rudá Iandê
Exhausted from trying to hold it all together?
You show up. You smile. You say the right things. But under the surface, something’s tightening. Maybe you don’t want to “stay positive” anymore. Maybe you’re done pretending everything’s fine.
This book is your permission slip to stop performing. To understand chaos at its root and all of your emotional layers.
In Laughing in the Face of Chaos, Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê brings over 30 years of deep, one-on-one work helping people untangle from the roles they’ve been stuck in—so they can return to something real. He exposes the quiet pressure to be good, be successful, be spiritual—and shows how freedom often lives on the other side of that pressure.
This isn’t a book about becoming your best self. It’s about becoming your real self.
