What is Privilege?

I've always known that I've been born into a position of privilege. My family prioritized our education and chose to spend the money we had on that, so my brother and I went to nice schools and had access to amazing facilities and teachers.  In that type of school environment there will always be people who live in that bubble of money and don't know anything different but it was a major priority in our house to stay grounded and know what the real world is like. And in this way I've always known that I am very lucky. 

But recently I was watching TV with my parents and we stumbled across a program where private landlords moved into their tenants houses for a week to experience their living conditions. We got to see on a personal level how so many people live on such a tight budget that there is nothing to save. One of the landlords was talking about choosing the life that you want, choosing the education, the career and type of life that you wanted to live. And I thought, what a load of rubbish! You cannot choose whether you're born into privilege or not, that is the very nature of it, an advantage from birth over which you have no control.  And it made me realize the privilege I experience on a whole other level, that I have a home to always come back to, that if there's a major accident, I'm not the only breadwinner in my family. Money is such a safety blanket in ways I hadn't even realized. 

So, I don't really know how to end this post. Let's all be thankful for what we have, give what we can and if you're having a bad day try and remember how lucky you really are. 

Find a link the an interesting video about privilege here . In the video bio you can do the quiz which shows how privileged you are.

Image taken from Oxfam