In summary, early retirement is a choice. The global economy is making it difficult to achieve it, but we can still try our best to plan toward enjoying it by saving, investing, and healthy living.
It's still possible but as you've said, it is a choice for everyone. While obviously the rich can do this without any problem, they're the only category and status of life that can do this. But let's get the example of true and genuine wealthiest people in the world. Despite that they can retire all of their lives, they never stop working. As if working is already part of their routine and they can't live a day if they don't have a work to do. But the retirement that they are trying to enjoy is with little stress and work that are assigned to them. So, getting that example from them, we can retire in a manner that we still have grit, hustles, investments and businesses that we can generate source of income because we can't just depend on retirement plans and pensions due to inflation rate.