Take One Step Forward

Take One Step Forward

At seventeen, I watched the "Privilege Walk" video on YouTube.
A group of people stand in a line. A facilitator asks questions:
"Take one step forward if both of your parents went to university."
"Take one step back if you've ever skipped a meal because you couldn't afford food."
"Take one step forward if you've never had to worry about your phone being shut off."
By the end, the line had fractured. Some stood far ahead. Others far behind.
I watched it three times. And I couldn't stop thinking: where would I be standing?

The Answer

Near the front. Not at the very front—there are always people with more. But ahead. Significantly ahead.
If I had been born in a different country. If my parents had been poor. If I had been born during a war.
None of these things were my choice. They were accidents of birth.
Nationality. Physical ability. Family wealth. The era you're born into. We all inherit some form of privilege. The question is: what do we do with it?

The Shame

At eighteen, I felt ashamed of my privilege.
Not guilty. Shame is different. Guilt says "I did something wrong." Shame says "I am something wrong."
I saw peers struggling—working multiple jobs to afford university, supporting families, navigating systems that weren't designed for them. And others like me who had never worked, never struggled, never had to choose between food and rent.
They ended up in the same classrooms. But they didn't walk the same path to get there.
I couldn't reconcile that. So I left.
At eighteen, I moved out. I rejected my parents' financial support. I spent nearly two years trying to strip away every advantage I had been given, as if I could somehow earn my place retroactively.
I thought that if I suffered enough, I could justify my existence.
I was wrong.

What I Learned

Michael Sandel argues in The Tyranny of Merit that meritocracy—the idea that success is purely the result of talent and effort—is a dangerous lie.
Talent is luck. When people succeed, they attribute it to their own hard work. They forget the systems, privileges, and luck that made their success possible.
This is how societies fracture. When the winners believe they won purely through effort, they look down on the losers. And the losers, tired of being told they didn't work hard enough, revolt.
Reading Sandel, I understood my mistake. I had been ashamed of my privilege because I thought it made my achievements illegitimate. But shame was the wrong response.
Privilege is not guilt. It's responsibility.

Forward

I tried to strip away my privilege. It didn't make me more deserving. It just made me miserable.
The problem isn't having privilege. The problem is pretending you don't.
I didn't choose to be born into privilege. But I can choose what I do with it.