“YOU ARE PRIVILEGED, you have been given something not a lot of people have, be thankful for it, be grateful for it.”

This is something that all of us, growing up in well to do family have heard. Although it is true and teaches us to be thankful for what we have been given, it had a deeper impact on me, a negative one. Everytime I saw someone, who was not as “privileged” as me financially or was differently abled, there was a persistent feeling of guilt, accompanied by some terrifying questions like “what have I done to deserve it?” and “do I even deserve what I have?”. In this process, we fail to see the beauty of what we are given, and are rather negatively impacted by it. Our privileges start feeling like burdens, and what follows is a bigger burden of not being able to appreciate any of it because of the guilt that we have been feeling because of our privileges.

In athletic events, we often see people having different start positions. The runner in the inner circle starts much behind the person running in the outer circle, to compensate for the extra ground the outer runner has to cover. So, is the outer runner “privileged”. He/she is seemingly given a head start, but we never look at that as privilege, because we know that it is only meant as a tool to establish a level playing field.

Similarly, life is a race, with the finish line being all the goals and aspirations we fulfill or are rather supposed to fulfill before the curtains are drawn. People who are born into any kind of privilege, financial, physical, intellectual etc, are all running in the outermost circle. The track they need to cover, the goals they need to complete are bigger and further than those running in the innermost circle and hence, their privilege is a mere tool provided to them to level the playing field.

In the process of seeing what we have been given as just privilege, we forget to see the power and responsibility that come with it. If the person in the outer circle, decides to use this tool as a head start, and covers a lesser distance than they were supposed to, then they fall short of the finish line, something that they are not allowed to do, and is probably the biggest injustice they can do to their tools.

None of us have the answer to why we are in the outer circle, but all we know is we are now responsible for doing justice with it and setting goals and aspirations of a level that justifies us being given these tools. We need to stop calling these tools privileges, and start seeing them as opportunities, opportunities that allow us to dream and do big.

“YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE, you have been given something not a lot of people have, use it.”