The biggest cultural shifts happen invisibly, bubbling away below the surface for years before someone notices a change. So it was the acceptability of moustaches and gluten-free diets. And so it is with an understanding that we will be working until we die.
There was once a time when the goal of any aspirational worker with decent earnings potential was early retirement. It was the Holy Grail of just deserts – you’ve worked hard, you’ve earned the right to sit looking at starry skies in a permanently semi-sozzled state on the veranda of a villa in the South of France, where family and friends will come and visit and be impressed and say: ‘What do you do with your time?’ And you will reply: ‘I read and sunbathe and just don’t know where the day goes.’
Not anymore.
These days, the goal of any aspirational worker with decent earnings potential is to keep working as long as possible before declining health heralds the inevitable slide towards death.
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