Do you know anyone that thinks that your success in life is because you were born with a “silver spoon in your mouth”? Sometimes, you would hear such sentiments from individuals who have some undeclared complex about you and your success.
Often, the complex they may feel is as a result of their feelings of inadequacy. In their mind, they are just as good as you or perhaps even better than you in all things that matter. For them, you just happened to be luckier than them but all things being equal, they would have succeeded more than you, gone further up the ladder or be richer than you.
A long time ago, I wrote a terrible research paper on the disparity of wealth between Blacks and Whites in one of the counties close to where I lived in Tennessee. And according to my “findings”, the main factor responsible for the disparity in wealth between Blacks and Whites was inheritance.
If you were born to parents who left you with nothing and you had to scrape through to even finish school, then get a job, get a room to rent etc., you would definitely be starting far behind the line if compared to another who got a compound gifted to him at birth or upon graduation and never had to worry about renting. So, I am not saying that being born to wealthy parents is not an advantage.
But what must be borne in mind is that even with the advantages of a rich parent, those advantages can take their rich children only so far. At some point, they will have to work to get to the summit of their dreams if they have any. Unless one is an heir like the Paris Hilton type where you get huge sums of money every month whether you work or not, most people would have to sweat some to even maintain the wealth left by a parent.
The poor child’s journey to the summit may be fraught with different challenges they will have to contend with but that does not mean that the rich man’s children don’t have to face up to their own challenges. It is always tempting to look at someone’s parents and claim that they are only successful because of their background. But that is a bit too simplistic and very lazy thinking.
Yes, we are all advantaged in some way or another and some are more advantaged than others. But I have seen people completely run to the ground successful ventures handed down to them by their parents. But no two people’s journey to success or failure is the same even if they are identical twins. I know of twins where one is successful and the other is scraping the bottom of the barrel despite the assistance of the other twin who is doing better.
It is important to recognize that we all travel our journeys differently. Some fly, others drive in government cars, some drive their own car, others ride a bike, some hitchhike, others walk and some run. In the end, all our journeys are different. No two days are exactly the same and no two individual journeys are the same even if they ride the same car.
We all have our individual experiences even if we are on the same bike headed to the same exact destination. And on that journey, sometimes, you cannot tell who is from Jah-Kunda or Fajara. Each has their own unique experience to success or failure.
So the next time someone looks at you and claims that you are where you are simply because of your background, smile at them and keep going. They have no idea if you took a taxi, rode on a bike or in some cases, rode on the back of taxpayers. Importantly, they may just be suffering from some inferiority complex. In their mind, they may not be where they would like to be and they see you as a scapegoat even though your paths may have never crossed.
To explain away their position in life, they try to devalue yours. But no one should make you feel bad for being born to your parents. I mean it’s not as if you chose your parents. Or am I missing something?
