"What kind of great future makes us willing to miss the four seasons?" — a Huxiu essay urges living now, not waiting for retirement

Overview

A personal essay published on Huxiu (虎嗅) asks a blunt question: must we postpone life until retirement and miss thirty years of seasons in the meantime? The author recounts a state-sector friend's perennial duty shifts and inability to take leave, and is struck by the idea of waiting "until retirement" — a horizon three decades distant. The piece argues that trading everyday experiences for a hoped-for future pension is a form of deferred living that risks losing the small, everyday pleasures that make life worth living.

Context

For Western readers: the essay sits inside a broader Chinese workplace culture marked by heavy work expectations, limited time off and strong family and financial pressures. The author notes that statutory annual leave accrues slowly and reports many workers effectively have little real downtime; some are on single-day weekends and struggle to take sick leave without worry. It has been reported that older generations and many families treat travel as an unaffordable luxury, while concerns about job stability and saving for retirement shape daily choices. Those realities intersect with larger social pressures in China — an aging population, housing and education costs, and a cautious labour market — that make "waiting for retirement" a common instinct rather than an abstract idea.

Takeaway

The essay’s prescription is simple and pointed: spend on yourself without shame, take the sick days you need, and aim to see different seasons and places while you are still relatively young. It contrasts this with a cousin working in Europe who enjoys far longer annual leave and can travel to distant islands — a rhetorical device to ask, must major life experiences always be postponed to a distant "great future"? The piece is not a policy paper, but it highlights a tension many Chinese workers feel between collective duty and individual well-being, and it asks whether societal norms and employment practices ought to change so people can live their lives now, not just after retirement.