If one goes to the dictionary in search of the word "to age" we can find the following definitions: "to become old or ancient a person or thing, to last, to remain for a long time." If we look for the word old we will find: "person of great age, said of the person who is no longer young." Worse is to go to a dictionary of synonyms where the word old is applied up to 22 definitions, most of them words or expressions that are usually used as insults or in a derogatory way, in everyday language.
The question about the age from which one can or cannot be considered old has no answer from the physiological point of view. It may have it from socioeconomics. Society usually imposes a retirement age - not always in all countries, nor in all professions - which would be something like the age of labor death or the official entry into what society considers the realm of old age.
There are fundamentally two causes and the type of action to be taken from the Neighborhood Associations that would constitute an area in growing expansion: the increase in the number of people who reach the misnamed "Third Age", and the change in traditional concepts about family responsibility.
Regarding the first, the evidence that, as life expectancy increases, the number of elderly increases, exempts from any comment.
In relation to the second, it is enough to think that today it no longer happens as in other times, when older people ended their days living with their children and grandchildren or, failing that, with other relatives; and when exceptionally it was not possible, they were welcomed in an asylum.
Since the last World War, it has become less and less common for the elderly to live with their children. Although some choose to enter a residence, most continue to stay in their usual home, separated from the rest of the population.
The decrease in their income, their physical mobility and their social ties are the most common problems of the elderly.
We must not forget those great problems to which we should provide solutions. The long queues, the unevenly distributed offices, their inconveniences with respect to travel and accommodations, the insistence on making them go to them again and again, the stairs, etc., undoubtedly represent, especially inconveniences and even serious disorders for the elderly.
We should look at the elderly as people, instead of succumbing to the ideas that the old are uniformly incapable of functioning independently in society, and learn from them in our Associations. They are true builders of socialization, both in that their previous experiences are an indispensable source of daily learning.
We should integrate the Third Youth, as we call them, in all those concerns and encourage them to recover the desire to live and make them understand that they are a very important nucleus that this civil society needs and we cannot do without them.
Not only with trips, snacks or celebrations; we must entertain them, they must be granted a decent monthly remuneration and not of misery as until now so that they can sustain themselves economically and let's stop giving alms!
We must make them participants in our social groups as enterprising people that they are, and take advantage of their extensive experience in life by conducting didactic courses so that they exercise their hands and their mind so necessary not to forget the memory that we have as a people. They are NOT "furniture" they are active living beings who need affection and give them the opportunity to exercise, keeping busy in these crucial moments in which we live.
CONCLUSIONS:
1.- Take them into account as they are inexhaustible sources of knowledge and for their great experience while respecting them.
2.- Increase of the monthly salary of misery that the majority receive.
3.- Establish decent Residences for our elderly, with places of recreation and leisure, where to cultivate the land, take care of animals. May they have a quality of life and with specific departments for each common geriatric disease.
4.- Greater support in home help.
5.- Construction and economic support to the centers of the 3rd Age.
6.- Greater control in the granting of social tourism trips for the 3rd Age.
7.- Implementation of cultural, physical, leisure activities.
8.- Free entrance to museums and use of buses, etc.
9.- Greater health and pharmacological care. Promote the geriatric health specialty.
10. Help families with sick or elderly people, promoting this help with students specialized in geriatrics or any health branch in practice or training (awarding scholarships to these students for it), this measure can also be applied to displaced students from any branch who are being welcomed in an elderly person's home.
*Nicolás Cabrera Acosta
Autonomic Director of the Historical-Social Department of Titeroygakat