Life has two blind spots most people overlook.

1st: We think joy begins after retirement. Fallacy. Many never reach 60. Death may come today, tomorrow, next week, any time. Why wait to live?

2nd: We think work will remain stable until retirement. Another fallacy. The economy rises and falls. Technology disrupts. No job is safe forever.

The way forward is balance. Save enough for the storm, but do not postpone living. Tomorrow is not promised. While the sun still shines, make our living and live our life.

There is another pattern forming in silence, one that escapes most people. A generation before us often chanted: “Don’t be loyal, loyalty doesn’t pay off.” This advice was passed down to their younger generation.

Because of this conditioning, today’s workforce does not easily stay loyal. The cause and effect of the past is shaping the cause and effect of the present. Now, due to the scarcity of loyalty, SMEs and some corporations have come to value loyalty, especially from capable people—more than anything else. Under current market conditions, those who have remained loyal for 15–20 years find their positions deeply anchored.

What dumbfounds me is how this notion of “loyalty” has crossed over into personal human relationships. You can see the same trend running in parallel: modern relationships are no longer as loyal and faithful as in the old days—they mirror the same conditioning we see in the workplace.

My bad. I agree the better wording would be as per you said, " reacting to the environment".

This observation on the last line is accurate. The present generation often fails to see the value of the previous one, just as it fails to see the consequences it leaves for the next. Our society struggles to perceive cause and effect across generations. Yet all these things still follow the law of cause and effect—only on a longer cycle.

There is another dreadful mindset I’ve noticed—some individuals believe that promotion or advancement in rank should come automatically with age, rather than through merit or capability. This kind of thinking is dangerous, both to the individual and to society.

For the individual, it creates complacency. They stop learning new tasks or taking on new roles, thinking to themselves: “I’ve reached this level, I’ve already suffered enough; now it’s the younger generation’s turn to go through what I went through.” But without realizing it, they risk being overtaken by younger and more capable peers.

For society, I’ve personally seen this in government agencies. Capable people are often held back, while promotions are given out simply based on age. The result is that some retire with the highest possible salary—not because they were the most capable, but because they stayed long enough. To me, this feels unfair to the nation and its people. In the end, we end up paying the highest salaries / pencen by default, not by contribution.