Or that a quarter of Canada's population will be over 65 in the next few years?

With two people turning 65 every second worldwide, our population is aging far faster than it's replacing itself.

So how old is old in today's world?

I'm turning 75 in two months, am I old?

That's the right answer.

I tell my children that they shouldn't expect their inheritance for at least another 25 years and they laugh, but they know I'm serious.

I didn't give much thought to these issues until I found myself on top of the world.

I was literally on top of the world.

I could see the curvature of the earth from 20,000 feet above sea level.

I had just climbed the last 5,000 feet with nothing more than a headlamp so that I could arrive at the summit to see the sunrise.

I was exhausted, out of breath, but smiling from ear to ear.

I had coordinated a volunteer trip for some of my students and their parents to build a much-needed school in rural Tanzania at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro.

The plan was to then ascend the mountain gradually so that we could acclimatize to the altitude.

I was by far the oldest on the trek, approaching the age of 60.

My students, all girls, were between 15 and 17 and their parents were probably about 45.

I made it to the summit.

Some of the others didn't.

On the descent, I had an epiphany and I made the bold decision to step back from my role as an educational leader and take advantage of my longevity bonus.

You know, those 25 to 30 additional years that we have beyond our grandparents' generation thanks to technology and medical advances.

I was aware that that old refrain of learn, earn, retire didn't work anymore with our extended lives today.

Think about it.

Social security and retirement were concepts introduced in the 1930s in the United States when the average lifespan was 62.

Today it's 82 and my grandchildren will have an average life expectancy of 100.

It's really time for us to think again about what it means to age.

And that's exactly what I did.

I devoted the next stage of my life to not-for-profit work.

Wherever I traveled, I made a point of volunteering to offset my carbon footprint.

At 60, I was in India coaching a secondary school principal.

I was writing travel brochures for the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

At 62 and 63, I was designing, developing, and delivering, in Spanish, communication workshops for the Honduran tourism sector and for a leadership team at a Baha'i university in Bolivia.

At 64, I was giving courses in the Canadian Arctic and Kujwak on board governance to a group of Inuit.

And at 65, I was helping a rural district school board in Kenya to develop some strategic plans.

And on my way home, I decided to stop over in Ethiopia to climb in the Simian Mountains, which I did with a guide, a cook, two mules, and a guard with a shotgun to ward off kidnappers.

I never could have done any of this without my life experience and my longevity mindset.

What do I mean by longevity mindset?

I mean those extra years that we now have as the new norm and no longer the exception.

A longevity mindset has a positive, lasting impact on how we act, think, and live.

My friends considered me to be fearless, but I was anything but.

I was terrified of what was happening to me in my mid-60s.

I was lost.

I felt like I was going down a rabbit hole of despair.

Suddenly, merchants were calling me dearie or sweetheart at the checkout counter.

I didn't recognize myself.

I felt invisible, irrelevant, and quite confused.

It was likely ageism, the bias or stereotype based on age, the only discriminatory practice that is still socially acceptable, unchallenged, and largely unnoticed.

Ageism creeps into our lives, shaping our perceptions, influencing our decisions, limiting our dreams, fostering disconnection, and shortening our lives.

It steals our future.

The World Health Organization in 2021 came out with a report in which it stated that one out of two persons worldwide is biased against older adults.

It's no surprise that we fear growing older.

We have been fed messages about anti-aging products and how to look, feel, and stay young since early childhood.

It certainly affected me.

I was lost.

I felt like I was in a dark hole until one day I realized, when somebody mentioned it to me, that the anti-aging industry is worth $62 billion annually in the United States.

That's a lot of money spent on making us feel negatively about something that is a natural process.

Another time I was listening to the radio and I heard somebody describe exactly the way I was feeling.

It had a name.

It was called internalized or self-directed ageism.

I had absorbed all those negative messages throughout my lifespan, and they stuck.

Fortunately, at that point, one of my former students re-entered my life, and she exposed me to social entrepreneurship and social impact investing.

It coincided with the realization of what was happening to me with ageism.

And so I decided to reinvent myself at age 67 and start a social venture that was intended and did promote age diversity and educate about ageism.

It was also at this point that I became more aware of the fact that we have an emerging demographic shift with populations aging and fertility rates declining.

It's more urgent than ever for us to combat ageism if we're going to thrive in the 21st century.

I was committed to dismantling those age myths, and I also wanted to tell everybody the real story about aging, because we've been terribly misled.

Granted, we have lapses in short-term memory sometimes, and there are parts that are in disrepair and need replacement.

In my case, it's a knee.

But our chronological age doesn't define us.

There are so many benefits to aging.

Those years beyond age 60 are some of the best.

It's referred to as the U-curve of happiness.

On this end, we have early childhood, and on this end, we have older adulthood.

These are the happiest times in our life.

And in the middle, we have crises and challenges with family, career, finances.

There are also benefits to having had a brain that's been around for a while.

As we age, our judgment improves.

Our perspectives broaden.

Our brain continues to develop with trillions more connections between brain cells than when we were younger.

We gain crystallized intelligence, which stems from life experience, reasoning, and problem-solving skills.

We increase by hemispheric processing.

We have better single-task focus and concentration.

And as we age, we also lose our egos.

We become more empathetic, more caring about others.

We want to leave a legacy.

And that contributes to greater emotional regulation.

The best, however, is that there's no expiry date on productivity or creativity.

In fact, life experience gives us a performance edge.

These are the hallmarks of growing older.

It's a pretty impressive list, I would say.

But we have more extraordinary information.

Becca Levy, a Yale professor, has determined through thousands of studies that with an optimistic mindset about aging, we can add 7.5 years to our lives, reduce cognitive decline, and heal faster.

When you next think about your age, no matter how old or young you are now, I invite all of you to disregard your chronological age.

Cultivate a longevity mindset.

Be positive.

Be open-minded and curious about new ideas and experiences.

Experiment.

Learn something new.

Step out of your comfort zone.

And build relationships across all generations.

Aging isn't a countdown.

It's a count up to unparalleled value and wisdom.

As we adopt a longevity mindset, one that acknowledges that we have longer lives today, we have the chance to reframe the narrative of aging to be a time filled with possibility, promise, and self-discovery.

After all, aging is the ultimate triumph of living.

As Betty Friedan said, aging isn't lost youth, but a new stage of opportunity and strength.