Photo by Gabriel Baranski on Unsplash

It’s important to aspire to something. It helps put bread on the table, and it gives us a sense of purpose at the end of the day. Some people keep an agenda, others do something crazy every day. But we all do the things we do with one goal in mind: to be happy.

If there’s one topic you won’t have trouble finding quotes on, it’s happiness. However, few are as truthful to the self as this one:

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy”. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

Last I heard, this citation was attributed to John Lennon, the English singer and songwriter who co-founded the band the Beatles together with Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. However, there’s a debate (on quote-centric sites) regarding the authorship. Some say it was actress Goldie Hawn who uttered these words in a fit of childish wisdom, while others point to a 2008 post on a tumblr blog called “littlemiss” as the source of the anecdote. Whoever said it surely understood a great deal about life. In fact, it’s probably the best promise you can make to yourself. At any age.