This feeling will keep you from achieving what?
What feeling?
Unfortunately for some, there is a profound sense that the choices they make don’t matter.
That their position – or status – in life is fixed and there is nothing they can do to change that.
This, I believe, is an issue of culture.
Once you believe it, and through actions and habits, your children believe it – soon your grandchildren will believe it.
It is a pernicious lie that seals away hope.
Everything you do matters. And, it matters forever.
I’m not saying ability doesn’t matter. It certainly helps. But there’s something powerful about realizing that you’ve undersold yourself—that somehow your mind confused lack of effort for inability. This is why, whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, “The feeling that our choices don’t matter.”
–J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy
