The Privileged Ones
A deck of cards.
A square table.
A person on each side.
One of them cuts the deck in the middle, then proceeds to shuffle the cards a couple of times, before distributing them one by one, each person getting the same number of random cards. Finally, the game begins.
The?lucky?one gets the best cards, and so the highest probability of winning the game. He can coast through it and claim the prize, unless he messes up in a truly epic manner.
One?unfortunate?bum gets the worst of them, with perhaps a 1% chance of winning. He’s gonna have to work his ass off on strategy and execution to succeed. He cannot afford to slack off or mess up.
The other two are?okay, with a so-so set of cards. They have a medium chance of success, but they’re still gonna have to work for it.
You know where this is going. It’s the classic life metaphor.
Interlude: everybody loves a great?underdog?story. The guy who never stood a chance, but kept pressing on anyway, struggling against all odds, until he succeeds. Same goes for a?rags to riches?story. From absolutely nothing, to everything.
There’s something about these narratives that speaks to our human desire to triumph against all adversity. And that’s why it’s so potent.
We live in a world that celebrates the self-made man, which is a great thing in and of itself. It inspires us to make the most out of the cards we’ve been dealt. That same world, in effect, frowns upon the more fortunate ones (mostly behind their backs) — those who have it easy and therefore must be despised or paid no mind.
As if people had a choice.
In life, you’re dealt your cards. If you’re here to play, you use them.
Back to the metaphor. Out of the 4 persons at the table, most of us probably relate to the two who are doing okay, playing their so-so cards. We don’t have most of the things we want, nor can we do whatever we wish, but it’s not like we worry about how to get our next meal or where we’ll sleep tonight.
Because of this privilege, we might feel sorry for those who aren’t as fortunate as we are. If we were being honest, we might even feel a little bit of shame and guilt, believing that the underdog-loving world sees us as the “bad guys”.
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I used to subscribe to this thinking. Not anymore.
In life, you’re dealt your cards. If you’re here to play, you use them. And it’s?not about the cards?in the first place — it’s?about how you play?them.
Let’s take inventory of our privileged lives. Where are we now?
A comfortable enough residence. Transportation we can afford. Three square meals a day. Fashionable clothes. Relationships we can rely on. A network we can tap. A respectable position in an organization. Access to funds or credit. Knowledge and future learning at our fingertips.
This is what the set of so-so cards looks like for most of us, and?they’re not nothing. It’s actually a pretty good set of cards. Now,?how will we use them?
If we consider how many of us with so-so cards actually exist, we can start imagining what kind of power we hold. While definitions of?“middle class”?will vary, research estimates it to make up?30% to 50% of the global population.
What can a third to a half of all humans do with their collective so-so cards?
It’s about time we got over the imagined burden of our privilege and started thinking about what to do with it. Specifically:?How will we use our privilege to do good in this world? Or, even better, how will we use our privilege to increase our capacity to make an impact?
Does it have to be a movement? Nope. Are we talking about impact on a massive scale? Far from it. Not yet, at least. We can start with the person right next to us, at the same table.
In life, you’re dealt your cards. You don’t get to choose the cards, but you get to choose how you play them.
So, how will you play them?