I've been pretty spoilt

(via nicked_metal)

Easy Your life has been 28% difficult.

Based on your family, money, political context, and personal situation -- during the important years of your development -- it appears your life was EASY. What does this mean? Well, the “difficulty” of your life is a measure of how rough you had it. Relative to the world, you had a pretty good childhood. I’m not saying it was really easy, just that you weren’t gnawing on a belt for calories. Still though, it wasn’t perfect. I’m not sure what “success” means to you, but whatever it is, you can achieve it. When you do, it’ll be that much more impressive. I have a new test! Straight males and gay/bi females, check out my brand new How Low Are Your Sex Standards Test

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 39% on difficult

Link: The How Difficult Is Your Life Test written by chicken_pot_pie on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Turning thirty seems like a bit of a milestone and the impending date has made me think back on the last thirty years -- not that I need much encouragement for navel-gazing. Right now I keep feeling amazed at just how privileged my life has been. It hasn’t been easy to recognise this, because I went to a school where many of the students were richer and had more famous and fashionable parents than I did, and I’ve now moved on to a university environment where I am surrounded by ambitious, high-achieving student and staff in the arts, sciences and medicine. But the fact that I have been granted entry into these worlds and have been able to stay in them is evidence that I’ve had a relatively gilded youth.

At the orientation session for this year’s students going to Jamkhed, we were asked why we’d chosen to do this course. The best reason I could think of was that I have no understanding of real poverty or hardship. But surely I don’t need to go to India to see poverty. And what use is just watching, anyway? Hopefully this “watching” will enable me to make a better contribution to my own community when I get back. But maybe what I really need is to stop feeling this paralysing sense of guilt and just do things.