That's quite a weighty question, but I've been thinking about it for years. Perhaps you'd like to consider it too?
First of all, most people consider that they have a right to retire. And of course if you've been contributing to a pension fund for decades, you do have a right to get it back in later years. That's one of the things that seems to be upsetting Americans about the threat to their social security.
But setting that aside, is retirement a right of passage, like the other stages of life... birth, marriage, retirement? Some people start planning for retirement almost as soon as they get their first job, and we all know people who find a lot of joy in retirement. But my concern is that too many of those people plan for retirement without really thinking about NOT retiring.
Retirement is not inevitable. This is where I get to the idea that it's a flawed construct. In other words, there's nothing certain about the idea that people will inevitably retire. It could be considered to more of a red herring than a real state to be achieved.
And that leads to the idea of choice. You can choose not to retire. You can continue to work on and perhaps contribute even more to society than you did in your younger years. I hope you'll make that choice.