There’s freedom in simplicity.

With all the media-glorified success, the 20-year-old TikTok millionaires, and the humblebraggers on LinkedIn (“Oh look, my TED talk just got a million views! I am soooooo grateful”), setting life goals that are, in fact, achievable and small — at least in comparison to Bezos’s plans of space exploration and Musk’s planet colonisation — seems like giving up on your (quote-unquote) purpose.

And yet, most cliche things are cliche for a reason. Ordinary and small goals work and have worked repeatedly for centuries. They resonate with us, humans. In the end, they are what we, when all is said and done, long for the most. I am talking about simple and vastly underappreciated things like owning a house, having a family, buying a dog, and living a calm, peaceful life in the suburbs.

Of course, not everyone wants a family, let alone a dog and the suburbs. Some people prefer to be alone (“self-partnered”, to quote Emma Watson), have cats (or no pets at all), and live in the city. We also must keep in mind that humans want different things at different stages in life. If you can’t imagine having kids today — and consider never having them — let’s see where you’ll be in 10–15 years. You might surprise yourself.

I’ve seen this happen to my older friends. They’ve had all these crazy ideas in their early twenties of living a carefree existence, filled with work-work-work, high ambition, never settling in their careers and relationships. Then suddenly, their turn 30 and want the “simple life”: get married, have kids, buy…