The Golden Years Only Seem to Happen in Hindsight
There’s a quiet truth that echoes through many therapy rooms, spoken with regret, longing, or sometimes a knowing smile:
“I didn’t realise how good things were at the time.”
It’s a common human experience, that strange trick of the mind where we look back on periods of our life and recognise them as golden, even though, when we were living them, they felt messy, uncertain, or ordinary.
Why does it so often take hindsight to see the good?
Why do the “golden years” so rarely shimmer while we’re living them?
Fear and the Present Moment
One answer lies in fear. When we’re in the thick of something… starting a family, building a career, navigating illness or change, we’re often caught up in what might go wrong. We worry, plan, prepare. Our minds fixate on threats, losses, unmet needs. Even in joyful seasons, we might feel anxious about whether we’re doing things “right,” or whether it will all fall apart.
Fear narrows our attention. It tells us to keep our eyes on the risks. While that helps keep us ‘safe’, it also makes it harder to notice what’s working, what’s beautiful, or what we’ll later wish we’d paused to appreciate.
The Softening of Memory
Memory has a way of sanding down the rough edges. Over time, the sleepless nights, the awkward conversations, the financial stress or parenting guilt blur into the background. What remains is the feeling of belonging, of purpose, or a particular warmth: the way your child used to reach for your hand without thinking, or the light that used to fall into your kitchen on slow weekend mornings.
We remember the golden threads. But often, we realise too late that we were already living in the kind of moments we now crave.
Grieving the Time We Didn’t Feel
This can bring sadness. Not only because that chapter has passed, but because we missed it. We were there, but not fully. The joy was happening, but we were too anxious, busy, or afraid to feel it. It’s a quiet kind of grief… grieving what was good, but unrecognised. Yet that grief can be a doorway. It invites us to do things differently now.
Recognising the Gold in Real Time
The challenge, and the opportunity, is learning to spot the gold while it’s still glinting, rather than only after it’s turned to memory. This doesn’t mean forcing gratitude or pretending things are easy when they’re not. It means gently opening to the possibility that, even amid the hard, there may be something quietly precious unfolding. It might be a moment of connection. A season of growth. A lesson that hurts but will one day ground you.
It means asking:
What might I miss about this time, one day?
What am I not seeing because I’m afraid, busy, or bracing for loss?
How might I soften, even just a little, to what’s here right now?
An Invitation
If the golden years only seem to happen in hindsight, perhaps we can begin to train our hearts and minds to notice the shimmer sooner. To feel some of the joy now, not just mourn its passing later. To let ourselves be here, with all the uncertainty, all the mess and still look for what’s quietly beautiful.
Because maybe the real gift isn’t just recognising the golden years once they’ve gone. Maybe it’s realising:
We’re in them.
I’ve found myself reflecting on this truth more and more, not just as a therapist, but as a person, a parent, a partner, someone moving through life with all its beauty and burden. There are moments I now look back on with such tenderness, and I wish I’d known then how precious they were.
Like many of us, I was often too focused on what needed fixing or planning to notice what was quietly okay, or even wonderful.
Writing this isn’t a lecture, it’s a reminder, to you and to me. To look up a little more. To soften. To remember that one day, we might long for the very moment we’re living now. If this resonates with you, if you’ve ever felt life rushing past while you’re stuck in stress or survival mode… pause with me here. Therapy can offer a space to reconnect with what matters, to quiet the inner critic, and to become more present to your own unfolding story.
Let’s talk about how you can begin to notice the gold in your life, before it becomes a memory.
Reach out today to start a conversation.