It is good to remember that life expectancy at birth did not reach the 65-year mark until 1955. Since then, this indicator has not stopped growing, and is now 84 years old. Without a doubt, it is something for which we should congratulate ourselves, as it is the result of many factors: better health services; better diet; environment and healthier life; less painful work, etc. etc…

In other words, aging, understood as a complex and continuous process that begins at birth and ends with death, is now much longer than in recent times. And we have to understand this as an opportunity, but if we look at what is said about the final stage of aging, it seems that it is the opposite: a problem.

Therefore, I think that the question is how we live this final stage of life, which is getting longer and longer, and we must try to make it positive for the people who are in it, and also for society as a whole in which they live.

Concern for how to live aging, once work and / or family activity ended, began the 1982 with the First World Assembly on Aging, hold in Vienna. From there, terms such as Healthy Aging, Successful Aging, have been coined, and as of 2002, with the celebration of the II World Assembly, the term appeared: Active Aging. And the thing does not stop there, because they are already talking about Full Aging.

And I wonder, why don’t we stop coining concepts that are often misunderstood, and we think that, regardless of age, all of us, from birth to death, are PEOPLE? People with needs that society as a whole has to help us meet and capacities that we have to put at the service of that same Society. No more no less.

Ismael Arnaiz Markaida