Being Privileged

The idea of writing about being privileged popped up to my mind late this week after a meeting. One of the casual conversations made in that meeting got me thinking real hard throughout the trip home. I’m not going to tell exactly what the content of the conversation is, but some people and I were talking about learning new things related to coding, and I realized how different my thought process was compared to them. Instead of thinking about the difference in the level of experience, I started to think about how different our backgrounds that influence our thinking might be.

Throughout the train ride back, I started to mentally list down all the things that make me really, really privileged:

1. I was born to educated parents who both have university degrees

2. Although we can’t exactly be categorized as rich, my family is pretty fortunate financially

3. I was born and live in the nation’s capital, Jakarta

4. My parents focus a lot on getting my sister and me to the best schools since we were young. From junior high to university, we always study in the nation’s top schools, some of them are private schools with expensive tuition fees

5. My parents are very supportive of my sister and me, and since they always support us mentally and financially, we never really had a hard time pursuing anything

6. Because of my parents’ financial support, I never had a hard time going to places, meeting and connecting with people, and building connections with people that would help me go further academically and professionally

7. I study computer science, which turns out will give me a job that pays really well

8. … and the list goes on, you get the point

When we see successful people who never really struggled financially or mentally, the highlight of their stories would be in their hard work and talent. In contrast, when we see success stories from people with underprivileged and unusual backgrounds, the highlight of the stories would be how they struggled because of their underprivileged backgrounds.

This is how much I’ve grown the past week: there is nothing wrong when people blame themselves or their families for being poor or underprivileged.

See these two examples and see if they resonate with you:

1. A lot of us ignore poor people on the street begging and think to ourselves that if we give them money they would keep on begging and will not work
2. Investors see startups’ founders with Silicon Valley or Harvard Business School background, they trust the startup more and they give them money

There is one thing that people don’t give to poor people but do to “pre-successful” startup founders. A chance.

When you see successful people with privileged backgrounds, they are always given a chance to succeed.

When you see successful people with underprivileged backgrounds, at least once in their lifetime, they were given a chance.

But what happens to millions of others who never got it?

Please keep in mind that I’m not trying to trash the success stories of others, both those who are privileged or not. I am writing this post as part of my realization and reflection of why I always felt that I could do anything I put my mind into. I realize that I’ve been moderately successful academically throughout life, and has been through pretty awesome pre-career internship experiences. Sometimes in the middle of the night before I fell asleep, I thought about all the things that led me to this point.

A lot of times, I thought about the hard work, struggle, and failures I went through in my early years as a university student. I thought about how I started working hard early before the others have started doing anything at all and how I eventually got rewarded for that. That’s what reading all these articles and success stories make me. I rarely thought about how privileged I was and take it for granted.

There is nothing wrong when people blame themselves or their families for being poor or underprivileged. Instead of bashing them, we should help them. Some people are not educated enough to know that sometimes opportunities also exist for them.

There is a kind-of-funny excerpt of one of the conversations about being privileged I had with Ricky:

“Kenapa orang kaya dan ganteng biasanya baik? Ya karena mereka kaya dan ganteng! Mereka gausah nyolong buat bisa makan. Apapun yang mereka mau dikasih sama orang lain, ya panteslah mereka baik. Kalo misalnya udah miskin terus jelek tapi baik, itu baru luar biasa”

which translates to

“Why are rich and good looking people usually kind? Because they are rich and good looking! They do not have to steal to be able to feed themselves. Whatever they want is given to them, it’s no wonder that they can be kind. If someone is kind despite being poor and ugly, that’s something people should talk about.”

Well yes. Number 9: I have a cool boyfriend.

I create this little space on the internet to write my thoughts and reflections on being a human, a woman, and a software developer. I don't have Instagram/Twitter but I can be found on LinkedIn. Feel free to contact/give feedback/tell me your story through my email: ivanaairenee@gmail.com