If you've achieved these 7 things by 70, you've lived a more meaningful life than most people ever will

At seventy, you don't count the years you've lived but the moments that made those years worth living.

I turned seventy-one last spring, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that a meaningful life has nothing to do with the size of your bank account or the impressiveness of your resume. After three decades of teaching high school English and watching thousands of young lives unfold their potential, then navigating my own journey through retirement, loss, and rediscovery, I've come to understand what truly matters when you look back on seven decades of living.

The world tells us success means climbing ladders, accumulating things, checking boxes. But when you reach this age, you realize that the most profound achievements are often invisible to the outside world. They're written not in headlines but in the quiet satisfaction of a life lived with intention.

1. You've learned to forgive yourself for your mistakes

Do you still lie awake at night replaying that conversation from 1987? That decision that changed everything? Here's what I know: every single person walking this earth carries a collection of regrets. The difference between those who thrive and those who merely survive is the ability to make peace with their imperfect past.

I spent years beating myself up over the times I was too harsh with my children when they were young, too focused on grading papers to attend every school play. But holding onto that guilt was like carrying stones in my pockets, weighing me down with every step forward. Learning to forgive myself didn't mean forgetting or excusing those moments. It meant acknowledging them, learning from them, and choosing to be gentle with the person I was then, who was doing her best with what she knew.

When you can look at your younger self with compassion rather than criticism, you free up an enormous amount of energy for actually living your life today.

2. You've discovered what actually brings you joy

There's a particular freedom that comes with age, and it's this: you stop performing happiness and start experiencing it. You know what genuinely lights you up versus what you thought should make you happy.

For decades, I thought joy meant big occasions, planned celebrations, achievements worth announcing. Now I find it in the steam rising from my morning coffee, in the way my neighbor's cat stretches in the sunshine, in the perfect sentence that flows from my pen when I'm writing. These aren't consolation prizes for a life that didn't turn out as planned. They're the real treasures that were there all along, waiting for me to slow down enough to notice them.

3. You've built at least one relationship that has weathered decades

Whether it's a marriage, a friendship, or a bond with a sibling, having someone who has known you for thirty, forty, fifty years or more is a kind of wealth that compounds over time. These relationships become living histories, witnesses to all your versions and evolutions.

My best friend and I met as young teachers, both of us overwhelmed and underprepared. We've seen each other through marriages, divorces, the raising of children, the death of parents, career changes, and countless ordinary Tuesday afternoons. There's something profound about sitting with someone who remembers the person you were at twenty-five and loves the person you've become at seventy. These long relationships teach us that love isn't just a feeling but a practice, a choice we make again and again through changing seasons.

4. You've faced a significant loss and found a way forward

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer," wrote Albert Camus. By seventy, most of us have discovered the truth of these words through lived experience.

Loss is the price of loving deeply, and if you've reached this age, you've likely paid it more than once. Parents, friends, perhaps a spouse or even a child. Each loss reshapes us, and how we navigate that reshaping determines so much about the quality of our remaining years. Finding a way forward doesn't mean "getting over it" or "moving on" in the way people sometimes suggest. It means learning to carry the absence, to honor it while still engaging with life.

After my husband died, I thought joy had left with him. But slowly, painfully, beautifully, I learned that grief and gratitude can coexist, that missing someone doesn't mean you stop living. This might be one of the most important things we ever learn.

5. You've stopped needing everyone to like you

Remember when a critical comment could ruin your whole week? When you'd twist yourself into knots trying to please everyone? If you've reached seventy and shed that exhausting burden, you've achieved something remarkable.

This doesn't mean becoming callous or unkind. It means understanding that your worth isn't determined by committee vote. It means speaking your truth even when your voice shakes. It means choosing authenticity over approval. The energy we spend trying to manage other people's opinions of us is energy stolen from actually living our lives. When you stop needing everyone to like you, you finally become free to be yourself.

6. You've contributed something that will outlast you

This doesn't have to be grand or publicly recognized. It could be children you've raised to be kind humans. Students whose lives you've touched. A garden that will bloom long after you're gone. Stories you've written down for future generations. A younger person you've mentored who will carry forward something you taught them.

During my teaching years, I kept every thank you note from students. Recently, I received one from a student I taught twenty years ago. She's a teacher now herself, and she wrote to tell me she still uses a writing exercise I taught her, now passing it on to her own students. That's immortality of the most meaningful kind, the ripples we create that keep expanding outward long after we've left the pond.

7. You've learned to be present in your own life

Have you noticed how much of life we spend elsewhere? Planning the future, replaying the past, imagining different scenarios, checking our phones. If by seventy you've learned to actually inhabit your moments as they're happening, you've mastered something that eludes people half your age.

Being present doesn't mean living without plans or memories. It means not missing your actual life while you're busy thinking about your theoretical one. It means tasting your food, listening when someone speaks, feeling the sun on your face without immediately reaching for your phone to capture it. It means understanding that this moment, right now, is the only one you're guaranteed.

Final thoughts

If you've achieved even a few of these things by seventy, you're doing remarkably well. And if you're younger and reading this, consider it a roadmap of sorts. These aren't achievements you can rush or force. They're the fruit of lived experience, of showing up day after day and paying attention.

The truth is, a meaningful life isn't measured in accomplishments but in awareness, not in perfection but in presence. It's built one ordinary day at a time, through choices so small they barely seem to matter until you look back and see they mattered most of all.