I was born in America. And I didn't do a thing to earn it. I didn't interview for it or outwork anyone for it. I showed up in a delivery room in the right country, and everything downstream — the schools, the safety, the shot at building something — flowed from an accident I had no hand in.
I recently read a UN headline that put a number on the other side of that accident. Roughly a quarter of a billion people need urgent humanitarian help right now, and the money to reach them is at its lowest in a decade.
Same lottery. Different results:
In Sudan, in Gaza, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Yemen, and countless others, people wake up to famine, hunger, war and even worse.
Same kind of parent. Same hopes for their kids. Different line on a map.
If you believe, as I do, that we live in the greatest country in the world — then sit with the harder question underneath it. What did you personally do to deserve being born here?
I've never come up with an answer. Because there isn't one. It was luck.
I'm not writing this to hand anyone guilt. Guilt is useless. I'm writing it to check my own entitlement, because I catch it in myself — grumbling about a delayed flight, a slow quarter, a rough Tuesday. Before I complain, I try to remember I could have been born almost anywhere. I wasn't.
That's not a reason for pride. It's a reason for gratitude — and for not looking away from, or down your nose at, the people the lottery treated differently.
Life is short. Most of my comfort is luck. The least I can do is not waste it being ungrateful.
#Gratitude #Leadership #ChipChats