Ben
@benersing
Potentially controversial take: I don’t want to retire, ever.
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Tom Beck
@tombeck.eth
I think the concept of retirement (like so many things) has become distorted. There’s the buy a house in Florida and waste away in Margaritaville sense of retirement, and that deserves its reproach. But there’s also a Michel de Montaigne retirement, where you step back into a more reflective mode.
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Tom Beck
@tombeck.eth
The type of work you do should change as you move into different life stages. We miss this subtlety because the word “work” is too flabby and imprecise. How can there not be confusion when you can work to run a company, work on a novel, and work on your golf swing.
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Tom Beck
@tombeck.eth
Yes, you should always “work” in this broad sense. But there is something crass and unseemly about people doing the work of a 40 or 50 year old well into their 70s and 80s (👋 Senators).
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Tom Beck
@tombeck.eth
To do so can rob the youth of opportunities. I personally owe a significant portion of my financial situation to a promotion I received a few years ago—only because my boss retired, opening that opportunity.
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Tom Beck
@tombeck.eth
Fear of retirement is a form of workaholism, a way to numb yourself from deeper feelings. In this sense it’s no different from alcoholism or gambling. Eventually you will retire, in the most literal sense of the word, whether you like it or not. 💀
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