By now, you may be aware that Canada’s seniors recently crossed a significant threshold. Statistics Canada announced for the first time ever that people over 65 now officially outnumber children under 15. The story is similar all over the world.

Historians will say one day that this global shift in demographics was one of the most important events of the 21st century. Indeed, it’s certainly a triumph of public health and modern medicine. For many, though, this shift is seen as a problem — and that’s a perception that needs to be corrected.

It’s true, of course, that getting older has its share of challenges and limitations. But we have come to look at aging as a set of physical symptoms, organ by organ, illness by illness, grimly tallying the personal, social and financial burdens they impose on families and societies, as if aging were merely an issue of decline and loss.

The perception of what it means to be in one’s 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s has not kept pace with modern medicine, and neither have our ways of optimizing the extra years that modern public health and medicine have given us.

If we stop looking at aging only in terms of loss and dependency, we can learn to capitalize on its promise by investing in age-friendly communities with integrated services.

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