The WHO likes to encourage support for active old age, which it sees as a state in which old people habe optimized their opportunities and the European Union has adopted a similar approach in its Healthy Ageing action pla,. Success in old age viewed from these convergent perspectives becomes a question requiring evaluation, for both the collective and the private realms. But we want to go back to the starting notion of "ageing well", and propose a questioning based on the whishes of old people themselves.