That usage of "lived" is a romanticization. It's the grandparent telling the starry-eyed children about the good old times, glossing over the decades of toil and hardship.

Many video games similarly skip time to focus on heroic moments. You don't role-play the 10,000 hours studying tomes at Hogwarts to become a 1st level wizard; instead you start the adventure at graduation, or at most do a training montage.