I grew up in a small suburb that was almost exclusively privileged people. This was my reality. This is what I perceived as the norm. I attended public school my whole life, and received a good education. I was never concerned for my safety, or where my next meal would come from. I believed that was the standard for schools, the standard for lifestyle, the standard for all life. I went on for 17 years with this perception engrained in my mind. I unintentionally took my privilege for granted, because that was simply all I had ever known.
The summer going into my senior year of high school, I was given the opportunity to leave the country for the first time in my life and do volunteer work in Thailand. I got to work with children who had lives completely opposite to mine in everyway, and it was extremely eye opening. My first day on the trip shattered my previous view of how the world worked. The kids I worked with did nothing to deserve their circumstances, but those were the cards they were dealt. It was seeing this that gave me my current view that life is a lottery. We have no control over what circumstances we are born into, which isn’t fair. I am fully aware of how overdone and clichéd my experience was, but things are clichéd because they are common and true. You can read, watch and hear about the injustices in the world, but you’ll never really, truly “get it” until you see it first hand.
It was hard for me to accept this newly discovered truth. I like to be optimistic, and I try to see the good in everything so finally seeing the inherit inequality of life was upsetting, but ultimately it has made me a better person. The world is far from fair, and being aware of that has humbled me and made me empathetic to other’s struggles.