Birthdays creeping up on you? Well, bring on the candles! A new survey from Pfizer—with the support of 10 leading health-advocacy groups—finds Americans are “optimistic” about aging. In fact, the most optimistic respondents in the survey were those ages 50 to 64. Who said getting old was a bad thing?

USA Today reports the survey of Americans over 18 also shows fewer people lie about their age as they get older, and while 64 percent of those over 65 reported their biggest fear was losing their independence or living with pain, just 7 percent fear dying the most.

“We have such a human aversion to getting old; it’s associated with death, and death is scary,” Linda Fried of the International Longevity Center at Columbia University, one of the groups involved with the survey, tells the newspaper. “But as a society, we have not had the conversations we need to have. There’s huge opportunities there.”

As Robert Browning wrote—and John Lennon sang—“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be.”

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