Our conventional narrative about life and work doesn't match the facts on the ground anymore. Mauro Guillén argues that we'd all be better off with a "perennial mindset."
"The reality is I feel like I’m just entering a different stage in my life. In the Vedic system, there are four stages of human life. The first is the student, the second is the householder and the third is retirement. The Sanskrit word for the third is actually vanaprastha, which means going into the forest. The idea is that during this stage of your life, you hand over your day-to-day responsibilities to the next generation and become an adviser and a teacher. I’m literally living in a rainforest, so it’s more than a metaphor in my case."
But you're so right about the precarity around health care and enough money. It keeps people trapped in "jobs" that are producing nothing but carbon dioxide and billionaires. That's a feature, not a bug.
I like Rose Marcario's definition of retirement in this interview:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/business/rose-marcario-patagonia-corner-office.html
"The reality is I feel like I’m just entering a different stage in my life. In the Vedic system, there are four stages of human life. The first is the student, the second is the householder and the third is retirement. The Sanskrit word for the third is actually vanaprastha, which means going into the forest. The idea is that during this stage of your life, you hand over your day-to-day responsibilities to the next generation and become an adviser and a teacher. I’m literally living in a rainforest, so it’s more than a metaphor in my case."
But you're so right about the precarity around health care and enough money. It keeps people trapped in "jobs" that are producing nothing but carbon dioxide and billionaires. That's a feature, not a bug.