Yesterday at the barbecue stall, a post-00s intern was bragging to me, saying his ultimate dream was “ordinary.”

I asked him to be specific.
He said: pay off his mortgage before 30, drive a Tesla to camp in the suburbs on weekends, take a trip abroad once a year, and even if his wife doesn’t work, she can still support the whole family—kids go to public school, but they can sign up for any extracurricular classes they want.
After he downed a mouthful of beer, he said, “Just muddle through an ordinary life—nothing too much, right?”
I almost couldn’t hold the skewer in my hand.
Bro, do you know how many people across the country make less than 5,000 a month? Do you know how many people’s “weekends” are just one day off—or even no days off at all? And do you know what those words—“my wife doesn’t work”—can do: they can wipe out 90% of arguments inside a family, but it also means you need a monthly income of at least 25,000?
You think “ordinary” is what it looks like—when in reality, it’s the bottom line that other people have fought for three generations just to keep.
I didn’t call him out. I just asked, “So what’s your salary right now?”
He said, “4,500.”
I nodded, and ordered ten more skewers for him.
The cruelest dark humor of this era is treating the top-end setup as the standard, and then calling the days you can’t reach “lying flat.”
—I watched him eat with gusto, and couldn’t bring myself to tell him: that “ordinary” life he was talking about means even the down payment alone would require his parents to sell their hometown house.
So tell me—should I laugh, or should I cry for him?