Whoever said that people were real in the first place?
What Addien has said above it true on so many levels, but I've got to disagree with the assumption that there was a time in which "everyone" lived their lives to their fullest. Yes, mainstream values have seemed to change over the years, but human nature has not. If history's taught us anything, it's that people do not change. Otherwise, you'd think we'd have learned from the horrors of the past. Wars truly don't resolve anything, for example - they merely let warring religious groups (it always comes down to different outlooks on life in the end) let out some aggression for a while. In the end, though, they're still just arguing over land, which isn't nearly as important as the people living on it, but neither side wants to see that.
Something that I've been searching for my whole life are people who aren't so caught up on meaningless conversations about nothing that they don't ever truly live their lives. The more I people-watch, the more it appears that most people have always asked how others are doing, but haven't really listened to the answer. Superficiality knows no age. People on the whole have such messed up priorities...unless you find people who understand life for what it really is, then the world can be a very lonely place.