Wherever you are, look up, Hannah.

A butcher’s sons no longer by default become butchers and a bookshop owner’s daughters no longer by default inherit the bookstore. A butcher’s son can now become a neurosurgeon and a billionaire if he wants to and is able to. We are more free than ever to break out of our classes and climb upwards (or tumble downwards) – and especially for those of us in the upper socioeconomic brackets, we can climb as high as we want because we have the resources to back us up. We have parents who support us financially. We have education that many less fortunate would kill to have. The government and the university give us scholarships and grants, even if we are not extremely wealthy. We have all the information we need and more at our fingertips. We have iPods and laptops and cell phones and expensive clothes. Frankly, we have more than we need. No matter how much we bitch and moan, the freedom and opportunity to become whatever we want – as long as we are good enough – is in abundance.

But the unfortunate clause of “as l0ng as we are good enough” is one that dooms us all. It is the “if we are good enough” or “if we prevail in the competition with eighty thousand other privileged kids that also want to be a neurosurgeon or a billionaire” that makes us cowardly and embarrassed, instead of bursting with confidence.

For those of us well-endowed, healthy, relatively well-off, well-fed, and well-dressed, we have nothing to blame for our mediocrity except our own incompetence. And if we are an attractive heterosexual white male in North America attending a prestigious university, whose mother is partner at a law firm and father is a mechanical engineer, the fear and self-consciousness is largely amplified. If we happen to be all these things, then we’re really screwed. There is absolutely nothing to blame! You can’t even blame the racist, classist, heterosexist, or sexist climate of the Western society, poor education, poor genetic makeup, or even lack of funds. If you are not a smashing success, it’s entirely your fault. Your last hope is to blame the imperfect education system that is failing you miserably. But I think even while complaining, we secretly know that there is a lot that you can get out of even an imperfect education system. Even its failures make us wiser.

And this is the “challenge” (if we could call it that) of the privileged that always goes unmentioned. Rightfully so, because there are larger and more tangible problems in the world. People are still starving and illiterate. At many corners of the globe, eighteen people have one book to share, rather than a functioning laptop for each person. I bet at least 90% of the youth population in the world would give both their arms and legs to be in our shoes. We have all the chances in the world while so many have none – and I think we should and do realize this injustice. We really lucked out in the lottery of being born here and of these circumstances. We can be as ambitious as we want, because we can afford to be – and that chance to be ambitious is something that cannot be traded for anything else. It is what makes us young.

But somehow so many of us are shockingly lacking in ambition. We are quiet about the future in spite of being in a perfect position to be singing and dancing about it. We should have more hope for happiness than everyone else, but we don’t. Those that are incredibly unfortunate often live for the future, while those of us that are incredibly fortunate dread it. This rightfully pisses off the less fortunate people. “Those spoiled brats!” they say. “They don’t know how good they have it!”

But I don’t think it is simple as that. Although many of us are indeed spoiled brats, I don’t think we are all so dumb that we do not realize the fact.

When I succeed with every known ingredient of success, it is not something I earned and own to the extent that it is for those who succeed with near to nothing. We turn a kinder eye to those who escaped the slums to become an attorney than to those whose parents were both university professors. If I am the privileged top 10% of the population, I am supposed to succeed, because I have the resources and the opportunity and the talent bequeathed to me by chance. Success is expected – and it is a surprise that I couldn’t succeed more. There is no excuse for failure - except maybe that I made all the wrong decisions or that I was just generally incompetent and untalented. Of course, neither of these are real excuses.

It’s not our parents that think this. Our parents I think are the most empathetic and supportive of all parental generations at least in recent history. It’s us. We are our harshest critics.

We are very aware of our luck and the expectations that we have of people with that kind of luck. And this awareness haunts us to the point that even our successes and accomplishments are made insignificant. It scares the shit out of us and makes us fumble for answers when they ask “What do you want to do after you graduate?” So we resent our good luck and privileges, as absurd as that is. We dread becoming adults and leaping into the sea of opportunities that many don’t have the chance to enjoy – that many envy and sometimes resent us for having.

And I think we are also very aware of how absurd this angst is. It’s angst about “having too much” or “having it too good”. How silly is that? How insulting is that to those who have too little and have it bad? I think even as we secretly angst, we realize that we deserve a smack in the face for being such ungrateful and spoiled brats.

But our most laughable tragedy (if it is even possible for overprivileged kids floating in the vast universe of freedom and opportunity to be tragic) is that we can never complain about any of this without sounding like the biggest dickheads in the world. We are the envy of everyone else. We deserve to be envied. We can’t play the victim, because we aren’t. And for the masochists in all of us, that is the final blow that drives us to lock our doors and cry in our rooms decorated with mahogany furniture and designer wallpapers.

But then, what could we possibly cry about?