A university student who was clearing mud after the flood in San Carlos de Apoquindo went viral after referring to two women over 50 as "ladies who clearly had trouble moving" due to their age. The statement was meant to be empathetic, but many of those alluded to felt somewhere between amused and annoyed. What do you mean, old! Amid jokes and irony, the gap emerged between the age others attribute to us and the stage of life we feel we are in. Around those days, while reading War and Peace, I came across Tolstoy's description of the vitality of a woman "despite her forty years." An age we can now associate with fullness was narrated under the sign of decline in a nineteenth-century novel. The fact is that in just a few generations we have managed to add decades to life, but our cultural representations of age do not seem to have changed at the same speed. Ages have meanings that change with history, even though we tend to treat them as if they had always meant the same thing. To a young person, a fifty-year-old may seem very old. Yet when that young person reaches fifty, they will push that boundary back, because they will feel very different from what they remember of their grandparents at that age. But while we update our perception of ages, many social expectations remain clinging to Tolstoy's calendar. We still assume there is an age for studying, another for settling down, and another for retiring, when real lives have become far more diverse. One can be raising children and caring for parents at the same time, going back to school, starting a business, or pairing up when everything was supposed to be settled. Back to the mud: it is also true that arguing that at fifty one is not yet old leaves unresolved what we think of those who are. We can push the boundary back without changing the associations of dependence or irrelevance we place behind it, but do we want to recognize old age in a different way, or simply postpone our entry into it? The boundary of old age is also marked by milestones such as retirement, which for a long time we have associated with withdrawal from active working life. If we have gained years and possibilities to keep developing and enjoying ourselves, it is appropriate to update that calendar and raise the retirement age. Doing so requires accompanying that longer working life with a new view of age, better working conditions, hiring opportunities, and support for those who care for others. Trades, health, and life paths mean we arrive at the same age in different ways. Recognizing those differences is part of making the change viable. The young man made us laugh because his calendar seemed outdated. Perhaps we should look at our own. It is urgent to raise the retirement age and prepare the working conditions that make it possible. Our lives have lengthened, and we cannot keep organizing them with Tolstoy's calendar. By Cristián Valdivieso, director of CriteriaNEWSLETTEROpinionSaturday, AMTensions in ideas, opposing views, and clear analysis: elements to uncover the issues that divide opinions and will set the agenda. By subscribing you are accepting the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policies of La Tercera.