This leads us to perhaps the hardest change of all: seeing a longer life as an opportunity and overcoming deeply engrained ageist assumptions. Currently, we underestimate the capacity of older people and the promise of our own later years.

David Bowie, a man who knew a thing or two about transitions, described ageing as “an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been”. If we can make life not just longer, but healthier, productive and engaged for longer, what’s not to like?

For most of human history, only a minority of the young and middle-aged became old. The result is that we underinvest in our later years and fail to provide the required support that a long healthy, productive and engaged life requires. Given how many of us alive can expect to become 80, have a shot at 90, and might even make it to 100, that is a problem which demands change.