LIKE many people in their early forties, I choose to view this current stage of my life as “late youth” rather than early middle age. After all, I still wear trainers and go to gigs. And I’ve not yet succumbed to booking a cruise.

In common with many in my generation I’m also in denial about all sorts of grown up things my parents at this age would have seemed equipped to face. Over the last few days, however, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time pondering one them: pensions.

My long overdue look into the future was prompted by two reports published recently outlining the stark reality of the UK’s current pension position; one recommended raising the pension age to 68 for those currently aged under 45, the other made clear under-30s shouldn’t expect a statte pension till they’re at least 70.

Like many freelance workers, I don’t have a private pension so as it stands I’ll be relying on the state and a vague notion of savings I’m unlikely to be able to accrue to look after me in old age. My parents’ generation, with their final salary pension schemes and defined benefits, would have collapsed in a heap of fear at the very thought of this situation. But then they took it for granted that women retired at 60, men at 65.

And for me the key to changing society’s attitude to retirement will come when we let go of these lazy, self-defeating numerical cut-off points. Instead of moaning that we won’t be able to retire at 60 likes our mums and dads, people my age should instead see these headline-grabbing reports as a potentially freeing wake-up call that allows us to envision working and earning well into our sixties, seventies, maybe even beyond.

As someone who is lucky enough to get both pleasure and fulfilment from work, I simply can’t envisage wanting to stop being a journalist, just because I happen to have turned 60, or indeed 65. Will I have run out of things to write about by then? I doubt it. Indeed, I like to think age and wisdom will make me a better, more human writer.

And if I can’t still be a journalist, I suppose I’ll have to do something else. A lifetime spent communicating with people from all walks of life will surely be of use to some sort of employer.

Looking at the older folk around me, the ones who have truly thrived are those who keep busy, whether in a paid or unpaid capacity. As the Herald’s fascinating Grey Matters series on ageing highlighted only last week, in many cases it is loneliness rather than poverty in modern times that is the killer of the elderly. Scientists have even quantified its impact on health as equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Life expectancy statistics show someone like me can hope to live well into their eighties. A report last year, meanwhile, said babies born now can expect to live until they are 100. With this in mind, people of my generation would do well to view working into their seventies and beyond as the norm, a positive intellectual and social engagement of choice rather than merely a monetary necessity. We simply will not get the generous subsidies offered to the Baby Boomers - we might as well face that fact and move on.

Clearly there will be some jobs that can’t practicably be done by older people, but the numbers already doing a wider array of work than ever before shows the market - and people - are flexible. Some of us may not want, or be able to, work at full pelt when we’re 75. But being willing and able to keep contributing to society through paid work will be both a necessity and, I believe, a salvation to my generation going forward.

Call me irresponsible, but the upshot of all this thinking is that I’ve decided to stop worrying about my pension. Instead, I’m going to embrace the prospect of not retiring at 60, 65 or even 70. And rejoice.