these were elements of your success that allowed your effort to pay off; elements of your personality that created your determination.... these can be traced to your genetic being when you were born; its a good thing to have these advantages. This is not about diminishing the value of your effort, but to recognize that people without the benefit of good health, neurologically determined learning abilities that are consistent with current environment, functional chemical and electrical balance in brain and body would not be able to achieve as you have, despite their effort.

That you coninue to have to work 60 hours a week (unless you love your work and would choose to do it without pay) to support your life may speak to the impact of the very unfortunate elements of your birth as you described them. Your effort, coupled with educated, supportive parents may have put you in a very different position.

There is a strongly projected illusion that anyone with persistence can make it to the top of whatever hill they wish to climb. Thus, those who don't charge ahead up the hill are obvious by their presence lower on the hill. Paint those lower on the hill as lazy, un motivated, un fit, etc; pretend all could be at the top with effort. And forget that most of those on the higher levels of the hills were born there.

I have spent many years working as a social worker helping people get income and medical if they become disabled (meaning not able to work). Most of my clients have spent lives working harder than most of us can imagine. That their effort yields the chaos of poverty is the result of elements that were present for them at the moment of their birth. Birth is a very uneven starting point in this world off ours. I;ve always thought a civilized culture would create values that balanced and reflected this reality.