“Everything in life is luck” –Donald Trump

Many people get defensive over a statement like this. They view it as an attack on their hard work and a discouraging sentiment to their actions. I understand this and I too feel a little disheartened when I think about luck. However, in the past couple weeks I’ve realized I was just looking at it from the wrong perspective.

I have been very lucky up to this point. I’ve been given an incredible family who could afford to give me everything I need. I went to a good public school which gave me opportunities to go to an incredible college. There were a lot of things up to this point I had no control over, they just worked out for me.

Yet, I did put in effort. I worked hard in school, I gave back to my community, and I tried to utilize all the luck in my favor. Where I am now does reflect my hard work, dedication and abilities.

But I can’t say I did it alone. I can’t pretend where I am was all my doing. I needed my parents, my friends and my community to help me thrive. I needed the privileges I had growing up to let my hard work lead me to where I am today. And yes, my hard work paid off. But that hard work had a lot of support.

When people argue they deserve everything they have because they worked hard for it, I am not disagreeing because I believe they didn’t put in the effort. I am disagreeing because my effort got me farther because my luck allowed it to. This is why we need to participate in conversations about privilege, because we should all have the chance to be rewarded fairly and equally for our work.

Each of us have privilege and lack it in the context of our environment. It’s relative and our privileges aren’t weighed equally. We succeed much more from some than others. But recognizing which we have can enable us to speak with others and foster conversations about bettering our society.

You did nothing to get the privileges you have and therefore there is no reason to feel guilty about them. However, this does not mean you can turn a blind eye to the injustice around you. Each of us need to undermine systems of oppression that foster an ignorance to what we’ve been given from the get go.

Systems of oppression do more to hurt all of us then help. And that’s why Trump said it perfectly because, regardless of whether he meant it in this context, it applies to all of us. And it’s time for each of us to use our luck to make the world a better place.

What’s the point of success if you don’t use it to help others? Well, start by discussing privilege with an open mind and heart because it’s the only way we can start change.