In ‘The Actual’, Saul Bellow wrote ‘Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemeteries.’ These point resonate.
Research (here) from the Institute of Economic Affairs shows that retirement can damage physical and mental health.
Encore.org points to an interesting way forward for those in a retirement age bracket. ‘Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying’ (Studs Terkel).