How happy we were...

"It sounds like you're saying older people who are the most happy are the ones with no outlook, no future, and no hope anymore. Did I misunderstand?"

When you get older your expectations of living are shorter.
When you are twenty you have (or you feel like you have) an unlimited life in front of you.
When you reach fifty or more you begin counting the people you knew and were your age and are dead.
You realize life is not unlimited and time runs faster than what you would like.
Because the things you would like to do are so many...and you fear you won't be able to do them all.
That is why you begin to look to the past and it looks so much better than the future, because you had so much time in front of you.
You still hope of course and you still live.
But a little bit slower, enjoying more what you have because you are not sure of what you WILL have.
Wisdom is accepting what you have.
And if you cannot have a limitless life, or you realize you saw life as limitless while it is not, you begin to enjoy the present, much more than the future.
And you begin to enjoy looking back, when you were different and you had more choices and more time to live (or you felt so, which is the same).
If you are not young, you like to dream of being young, as much as you liked to dream to be a grown up.
Well, it can look confusing, but we are made in the wrong way.
Always looking at what we do not have and we would like to have...
But that is the lesson of life: always hoping and dreaming, past, present, future, who cares, as long as you can close your eyes and see what you like...