The heart of the matter, concisely put by the ILC-USA’s Executive Director Everette Dennis in his opening remarks at this annual journalism seminar, is the “perception of aging as a social problem versus as a great human achievement.”

Bad-boy British novelist Martin Amis  is in the news for proposing euthanasia "booths" on street corners where the old old could off themselves with "a martini and a medal.” Amis maintained that his comments were meant to be "satirical" rather than "glib", but there’s something to offend just about everyone in his prediction that “a population of demented very old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, [will be] stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops.”

The card sharks of Laguna Woods, an Orange County, CA, retirement community, can’t even play bridge in peace. They’re part of the world’s largest decades-long study of health and mental acuity in the elderly. Begun by University of Southern California researchers in 1981, the 90+ Study has tracked more than 14,000 people aged 65 and older — the first group “large enough to provide a glimpse into the lucid brain at the furthest reach of human life,” as Benedict Carey wrote in the New York Times.

If I had to live the rest of my life without breaking a sweat, I could cope. Strapping lads could carry me up subway steps on a litter. Somehow, I’d get my brain from place to place. Vigor, agility, beauty . . . those, too, I can acknowledge losing, though not without a struggle. They don’t hold a candle to my deepest terror: that I’ll lose my mind. Just how reasonable is this fear?

Knees hurt.  Memory hiccups.  Eyesight and hearing degenerate. I’ve interviewed people who can’t walk unassisted, who’re hooked up to oxygen tanks, who are being treated for cancer. But while those who work into their eighties and nineties face many different physical challenges, they share one attribute:  excellent cognitive function. And as Judy Steed writes in the Toronto Star,  “the harsh truth is that you can't enjoy old age if you haven't got the healthy brain to go with it.”