PM Lee must be feeling pretty relieved right now, the way any politician would when they’ve delivered potentially unwelcome news without a hitch. During last Sunday’s National Day Rally, he announced that the retirement age would be gradually raised from 62 to 65, and the re-employment age from 67 to 70, by 2030.

Apart from some concerns from employers, the news has, for the most part, been met with crickets from the general public.

At first blush, this sounds surprising; one might’ve expected furious howls of, “Why is the government asking me to work longer??” (To be clear, they aren’t.) It becomes less so, however, when you consider that most people don’t think much about retirement to begin with.

Just ask any financial advisor or insurance agent: numerous surveys have shown that people generally don’t start thinking about retirement till they’re in their 40s. For anyone younger than that, retirement exists only in the abstract—a phase of life so distant it’s all but impossible to imagine.

As someone in my mid-20s, being 65 is just as inconceivable to me as being 62; those three extra years mean nothing to me now. You can’t really be upset when you can’t even contemplate the issue to begin with.

But more than that, if no one’s really up in arms about this policy change, it’s because it aligns with what we all know to be true: Singaporeans are living longer, and we will need to prepare for an ageing population with a greying workforce.

Singapore’s average life expectancy, projected to reach 84.8 by 2030, is amongst the highest in the world. With individual responsibility being a pillar of local policymaking, it’s broadly accepted that we (ie. the workforce) will have to do our part in working longer, managing our finances, and adjusting our lifestyles to match this.

Nonetheless, retirement itself is still seen as a kind of certainty—the Promised Land which awaits at the end of our decades of toil, with work itself a one-way train to bear us there.

In light of this, perhaps the questions worth asking have less to do with when we can expect to retire, but how we think of retirement in the first place.