The Illusion That Enduring Means You Can Stay Until Retirement
I. Losing the Steering Wheel
Until my 30s,
when work was exhausting,
or when the company’s direction didn’t match what I believed,
I had options.
I could keep control over my life—at least to some extent.
But once I stepped into my 40s,
I had to decide—
do I stay at this job,
or do I attempt one last move?
And no matter what I chose,
“Should I just go somewhere else?” was no longer an option.
I became sensitive to promotions,
and to where I stood inside the company.
My relationship with the people above me,
how they looked at me,
how they evaluated me—
I couldn’t help but care.
By the time I turned 45,
I knew it.
And the people above me knew it too.
There are kind people, of course.
But there are also people who know exactly how to use that situation.
Calls that ring at any hour.
Unreasonable orders—sometimes absurd ones.
Even after leaving the company,
the “power dynamic”—the relationship of 갑 and 을—doesn’t simply end.
“Mutual respect, as colleagues?”
If you question it even once,
it comes back as workplace disadvantages—
delivered through “official meetings,”
in the most formal way possible.
My control over life disappears.
Even when I feel like I might die if I stay,
even when I know I have no real “options,”
I eventually quit.
A statistic like
“The average retirement age for Korean men is 49.3”
stops being someone else’s story.
It becomes my reality.
II. A Frog in a Small Well
1. A limit that’s hard to break out of
My first button into society was a job.
It was how I survived.
So I never seriously thought about who I would be
after leaving a company.
When things got hard, I’d think:
“What if I farm in the countryside?”
“What if I open a fried chicken shop?”
I imagine it, but then—
“I don’t have money.”
“If I lose income right now…”
“And everyone says most small businesses fail…”
So the idea of “me outside the company” ends as a complaint.
And, as always,
I go back to work.
2. Working until retirement was my choice—wasn’t it?
Until my 30s,
“If you work well and have real skills,
you’ll naturally get promoted,
and you can stay until retirement.”
In my early 40s,
“Huh?
If my junior gets promoted first,
do I now need their approval?”
“Work life isn’t easy.”
“Well… it can’t be helped.
Promotion needs both skill and luck…”
By my mid-40s,
“Ah…
Just because I have nowhere to go,
is that why they can treat me like this?”
“I’m being treated like I don’t even matter.”
Being looked down on because I ‘have nowhere else to go’
is a humiliation I didn’t know would be this hard to endure.
If you keep swallowing that humiliation,
stress hits your body first.
Self-esteem drops.
Health starts to crack.
I think I might die.”
Only then do I realize—
the belief that I could “work until retirement”
was an illusion.
III. If We Have to Leave the Company Anyway
Some people stay a long time,
but many leave before 50.
I don’t want anyone to face this reality only after it’s too late.
So I’m sharing lines from Boss Studies 101 (사장학 개론).
If you fail, you can lose everything—
you could even end up separated from your family.
And yet, people become a boss because it allows them to live
with control over their own life.
If you succeed in this challenge,
you gain the freedom to do what you want,
and the freedom not to do what you don’t want.
Freedom built from assets returns life to you,
helps you protect the people you love to the end,
and supports you in living as an independent person.
Maybe we were already collapsing—slowly—while still inside it.
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