As with beauty, feeling "old" or "old" depends on the person you ask. Regardless of the answer, the topic is on the minds of those over 60 and, whether they recognize it or not, it is beginning to appear in many after-dinner conversations about staying young, or at least delaying old age.
In recent years the definition of "old" has changed and now some experts point out that today a 60-year-old lady or man is middle-aged. Or at most “greater”. Because… what is being old or old?
First of all, it's somewhat subjective: there are people who, at 50, believe they already know everything and others who, at 60, still experience youthful tingling in their stomachs. María Teresa Bazo, Professor of Sociology at the University of the Basque Country and a great scholar of this age segment, has pointed out that many sixty-year-olds have internalized the idea of longevity and feel that they have many years ahead of them that they do not want to waste.
In a brief survey carried out in this article among several of the 11 million baby boomers who are over 60 in Spain, a single question was asked: do you feel old or old? There were answers for all tastes, but the common denominator was that nobody identified with any of the definitions of old that the RAE offers (especially with "tarnished, spoiled by use") or with the synonyms that Fernando Corripio proposes in his dictionary: old grandfather, geezer, projected, old-fashioned, old-fashioned, senile, decrepit, mature, old man, ailing, methuselah, doddering, aged…
On the contrary, the responses ranged from “I feel myself in the sunny autumn of my life”, to “I will be when I can't run my eight kilometers every Saturday”, to “I'll feel old when I lose my curiosity”. A 60-year-old man said: “The problem is not how you feel, but how others perceive you. When they start calling me you, I realize how old I am." There was also a woman who pointed out: “when I need two hours to feel good after getting up, I will accept that I am already old”. Finally, there were several answers in line with what a sixty-year-old (as the old sixty-year-olds are beginning to be known) responded: “I will feel old when I feel like doing something and I don't do it out of laziness”. And then he added: "the truth is that it's something that I'm noticing, but I'm still a fighter, because afterwards I never regret it... At this age, comfort is tempting, poisonous and... toxic."
In short: the old-age threshold is increasingly shifting and no longer depends solely on the number of years lived or an established date that marks the beginning of old age, but rather on personal health, cognitive function, disability rates and Above all, the desire to live.
Although experts distinguish between chronological and biological age, we should also talk about psychological age, that is, one's own self-perception of old age, understanding as such the set of thoughts and opinions that each one forms about oneself and what surrounds him. Picasso already said it: "when you are truly young, you are for a lifetime"...
In a recent book, Crónica rosa rosae (Larousse), historian Paco Álvarez cites an amusing anecdote about Cicero, the Roman philosopher and orator who, it seems, was very scathing with his jokes. As Álvarez writes, “one day Cicero was at the birthday party of a lady who was taking years off and, seeing how the guests smiled at the age that the lady said she was, she, very dignified, stated: 'Well, ask Cicero, who you know never lies, how old I am. Cicero answered when he heard her name and said: ´It is true, I assure you that since I have known her, for years, he has always said the same number. Everyone laughed but it is not known if the lady invited him back... It also seems that Cicero answered a friend of his who had the same mania for losing years: "So when we went to school together, you hadn't born yet?"
Many jokes and memes affect the same idea but, for the purposes, it is much better to see the bottle half full than half empty. Something very different is the perception that the people around them have, especially young people of chronological age, since there are also boys and girls who, at the age of 20 (even 15...) think they know everything, which somehow makes them old.
In an old report entitled Forever Young about people who were entering their fifth or sixth decade of existence, Fernando Martín Malavé, a 65-year-old gynecologist from Malaga who had been the father of a little girl named Aura five months earlier, stated: “The Life is like a ladder. Whoever considers that they have already uploaded the whole thing, creates for themselves the obligation to start downloading. That is why you always have to leave steps ahead and not close the door to illusions”.
And it is that, although it has not yet been said, a new way of growing older is emerging that our parents did not know and that it is speculated that it will be the majority in the future: being young in spirit as long as possible.
One nail to hold on to is life expectancy, which has grown a lot in recent decades. But, more than the quantity of life, it has been the quality of life that has led to the image of the current sixty-year-olds having nothing to do with that of yesteryear.
We are talking about a highly topical debate in countries that are witnessing accelerated ageing, such as Japan or Spain. Japanese gerontologists, for example, after observing that more and more people are over 90 years of age, proposed, six years ago, to reclassify old age into three groups: pre-old age, referring to people between 65 and 74 years of age; old age, for those between 75 and 90, and super old age for the group of “super seniors”, those who are over 90 years of age.
Also in Spain, the CSIC has proposed that someone be considered "old" 15 years before their death, taking life expectancy at 65 as the expected date. Seen this way, given that life expectancy in 2021 in Spain was 85.83 years for women, and 80.25 for men, a woman should not be considered "technically" old until she turns 70 (the result to subtract 15 from 85).
More data for optimism: according to a projection by the National Institute of Statistics, in 2035 life expectancy at birth will reach 83.2 in young people and 87.7 in women.
The age at which one is officially old differs substantially depending on the generation in question. For those who are now between 20 and 30 years old, a person is old with 59 years. The generation of 40-year-olds and 40-year-olds (not 40-year-olds) has a somewhat different vision: old age begins at 65, pointed out a 2017 study conducted by the U.S. Trust Insight on Wealth
So... from what age can we consider an old person? It is impossible to know. In 2022, a new study carried out in the United Kingdom by Treasure Trails has given a twist to the stereotype that old age begins when the pension begins to be collected. As can be seen from this survey carried out among people over 60 years of age, almost half of the participants indicate that "the sixties are the new 40".
The aforementioned research reveals that the average Briton aged 60 or over feels 12 years and 5 months younger than their actual age, thanks to playing sports, solving puzzles, playing with consoles, tablets and smartphones and spending time with their grandchildren.
One in ten even affirms that they have more energy than their children and that they would be capable of working as a spy or private investigator. In addition, 5% love to visit escape rooms and 1% enjoy high-adrenaline sports such as kitesurfing, skydiving or mountain descent.
A piece of information that agrees with what an interviewee answered when requested by The New York Times about whether she considered herself old: "Old is my current age 4".
