I have been thinking about this a lot recently. A former boss and good friend who is incredibly smart and effective in the work place asked why the two of us had never gone the PE route and been more successful. While he is very successful by most standards, he sees people flying private jets all the time who do not appear more skillful, yet have been more successful. As I think on this, I feel I simply was never willing to go all in on the risk required to achieve that level of financial success. I tried co-founding a company once when I was 28 while engaged and importantly, before children. I felt I could take the risk and if I failed, could bounce back. I did fail - company did ok but my I ended up disliking working with my senior partner - and I did bounce back, ending up at GE.
After that, I did not feel comfortable taking that level of risk until my children were off to college and no longer dependent on me an I had enough money saved that my wife and I would be ok for a long time. The people I know who have been jet-money financially successful took huge risks. They were all in on their venture(s). Frequently this cost them their marriage and/or relationships with the children. This was their choice. Their cost/benefit analysis to optimize their success criteria. Some regret the decisions - they underestimated the effort and impact on those they cared about. However, most have not. They are happy with how things have turned out.
Different strokes for different folks.
Many people do not fall on the good side of that random chance.
Dealing with poverty in my youth, homeless at 16, no parents to help me, debilitating ADHD, tourettic OCD, bipolar type II, CPTSD from 10 years of intense childhood physical/emotional abuse, my full-ride college scholarships illegally stolen from me by a high school who knew I was homeless and had no recourse and allowed a teacher to illegally modify my grades out of pure spite, malnourished, intense, crippling sciatica, fused lumbar discs, possible fibromyalgia, and then developing excruciating daily pains and physical disability which greatly impacted my life and sometimes made me suicidal, which turned out to be an autoimmune disorder that took 10 years for doctors to figure out... an extremely intense case of gout developing since my teens...
I just keep pushing on but every day I see people who take so much for granted, and who are so ready to pass judgement without appreciating the basic privilege of good health.
I've had to deal with so much struggle that the average person wouldn't even want to take the time to hear all of it much less believe it, once someone momentarily realizes that they'd have it comparatively easy compared to others, they often get defensive as they begin to realize that their life doesn't have nearly as many barriers as they've convinced themselves, and they have to come to terms with not applying themselves harder. It's easier for them to be dismissive and tell me, "all your problems would go away if you worked out more" or tell me to get on a keto diet, or whatever have you, as if I haven't tried every single thing I can think of.
And the insane thing is I am still quite privileged compared to some people in war-torn countries, even if they are able to move around without swallowing a truckload of ibuprofen. Reminding myself of that is a source of strength and determination to keep moving forward.
The generous interpretation would be that you have sufficiently good health that you do not have to structure your life around it, and therefore lack understanding of the challenges faced by those who do.
The alternate interpretation, that you do understand and choose to ignore and dismiss, would be rather less generous to you.
As for bringing up children, I did make the leap that that is generally a big difference between younger employees and older employees.
It sounds like what you think you wrote, is not in fact the words of yours that everybody has been reading.
In my follow up comment I attempted to clarify my comment in response to giantg2's reply. "I do not have a disability (my wife may disagree) and I agree it makes life more challenging (wouldn’t be called a disability otherwise)." I completely agree a disability makes life more difficult. I simply added that it is not the only thing that makes life more difficult. All of these things need to be considered when making career/job decisions.
> In my initial comment I said "I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” I still maintain that comment.
> I completely agree a disability makes life more difficult.
Do you not see how it's hard to square the first statement, with the second? You do not agree that life is much harder for some people, but you do agree that a disability makes life more difficult?
It sounds like you have very little experience with people outside your socioeconomic class. (Or you do have that experience, but have drawn the wrong conclusions from it.) It is an obvious, proven fact that life is much harder for some people than for others.
A double negative is risky without typos, though.
I think their quibble was with a different item being used as evidence there (i.e., having a family), not necessarily with all that was said.
I think helping one another to build empathy is a good thing, and even if the person I replied to is unable to do so, it's possible that observing them tell a disabled person that they don't think their life is any harder will help other third parties such as yourself build that empathy.
I did not flag their original comment, but it's not for no reason it was flagged to death.
In other cases downvoted posts are often the most interesting precisely because they trigger people with points they don't want to consider. I certainly wouldn't cite it as proof of any position.
Many also don't have the choice to start a family, no matter how badly they want it.
As for starting a family, I agree not all can. My mistake was jumping from their assertion that I must be young to mean I did not have the responsibilities of an older worker such as taking care of a family. The less generous interpretation of that accusation is what? I am stupid? Ignorant of life? Not suffering from the impact of issues that I did not choose?
Some of the "free choices" you claim people can make, will only be possible if some other people don't make those same choices.