A quick guide for understanding age

You may not realize it, but fate has given you an extraordinary gift. You have been born in a time and place in which people live longer than at any time in human history. With the average lifespan increasing, we have to change the way we look at age. Here's a quick guide to help you understand and redefine what it means to grow old.

Compared with the vast majority of people who have passed their time on this planet, you have been given on average 30 years more life than they had. Do you realize the grandness of this?

• Until a century ago, the average person died in his or her forties. Before the 20th century, the cycle of life was much more compressed for most people. Your work life might have started at eight or 10; by 15 you were a parent; by 30, you were a grandparent; and by 40, your body was broken, pain-filled and in final decline.
• Today, most people who turn 40 believe they have yet to get to the halfway point of their lives. Some are just becoming parents; others are finally launching their "real" careers.
• To call 45 middle-age would have been ridiculous 100 years ago. Yet it may be just as ridiculous today. What is middle age? After all, with an average lifespan of nearly 78, and with people 85 and older making up the fastest growing segment of the population in most countries, who's to say when we're really at the middle of our lives? Particularly when our wisdom, capabilities and contributions are often just beginning to take flight in our forties and fifties?

Being old no longer has much to do with the number of years you've lived.

• So what is "old"? Old is your great-grandmother, who was bent, shaky, and mentally faded well before her time. Old are the people whose vitality long ago slipped away, leaving them in wheelchairs in nursing homes. Old is the lonely, tired senior who stays in the house and talks to the cats all day in between television shows. As for the rest of us — we're just getting started.