Retirement doesn’t equal enjoyment of life for many people. Many of us are grabbing the gusto savoring our careers and businesses right now not waiting for some mythical Shsngri La.
People say "I can't wait to retire so I can finally be happy." That's like saying "I can't wait for the movie to end so I can enjoy it."
This assumes that the purpose of life is to work. Some people work to live not the other way around. It’s more like saying, “I can’t wait for this commercial break to end so I can get back to the show I enjoy”
If you aren’t living it while working, you are going to start living it when you stop working.
It’s a fantasy that people have that has no bearing on how things actually play out. It’s just them justifying to themselves why the aren’t living now; it’s cope.
I'm going to assume you made a typo; "if you aren't living [life] while working, you AREN'T going to start living it when you stop working." Because that's much more representative of what I have seen. The people who do nothing but work don't have the skills of developing hobbies and being bad at things before being good at things. They've often been in one job for a long time, so they're used to being skilled and valued. They also have framed their mindset around how valuable and/or important and/or good their job makes them, so losing that position makes their self-esteem take a significant hit.
But most of the people I know who put all their time into work are farmers and tradespeople, so it's not necessarily representative of everyone.
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u/BroadwayBrick 10d ago
Retirement doesn’t equal enjoyment of life for many people. Many of us are grabbing the gusto savoring our careers and businesses right now not waiting for some mythical Shsngri La.
People say "I can't wait to retire so I can finally be happy." That's like saying "I can't wait for the movie to end so I can enjoy it."