I’m tired of all these “YOur lIFe iS WHat yOU maKe iT” people. No it’s not. It’s entirely determined by the circumstances you’re born into. A UK newspaper just released a “how deprived is your area” postcode checker. I put my postcode in, guess what:
Your area is ranked 10,550 out of 33,755 in the 2025 Index of Multiple Deprivation (where 1 is most deprived and 33,755 is least deprived). This means it is more deprived than most neighourhoods. Of the five main components that make up IMD, your area ranks lowest (most deprived) on health and highest on crime.
Well here I am with rapidly deteriorating health and have been the victim of many violent crimes, but I guess I brought it on myself since my life is what I make it.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/oct/30/how-deprived-is-your-area
It’s really more of a probability thing imo. You can be born somewhere that sucks ass and you’ve got a 95% chance of having a shitty life no matter what you do. But there are billions of us fuckers and 5% chances happen all the time. So if you work really hard and do everything right, you get the opportunity to get lucky and have a better life. But most people who work hard don’t get that lucky shot, and sometimes people who do get lucky aren’t working hard and miss the chance. So there’s this small group of people, the ones who got lucky and were positioned correctly to take advantage of it, who tend to be very vocal about how anybody can just pick themselves up by their bootstraps. If I did it, so can you! And they don’t even realize how lucky they were to get that opportunity because of how hard they worked to seize the opportunity when it arrived.