We often tell ourselves a comforting story about success. We imagine it as a mountain, but one where some begin their climb from a lush, well-marked base camp with the finest gear, while others start in a barren desert, far from the trailhead, with only the clothes on their back. This image leads us to believe that the journey—the very work required—is fundamentally different depending on your starting point. It suggests that privilege creates a shortcut, or that adversity imposes an impossible detour. But this is a misunderstanding. The terrain may vary dramatically, yet the altitude you must gain—the raw, vertical effort of becoming—remains strikingly constant.
Those born into advantage are not spared the climb. Their path may be free of certain brush and their boots may be sturdier, but the mountain demands the same essential toll: the cultivation of discipline, the resilience to face storms, the courage to traverse narrow ledges of risk, and the lonely hours of practice that forge mastery. Privilege can provide a map, but it cannot take a single step for you. It can offer supplies, but it cannot instill the grit to continue when your legs are burning and the summit is shrouded in cloud. Without the essential work of building character, skill, and tenacity, the person who started at base camp will simply plateau, watching as others, forged in harder landscapes, ascend past them.
Conversely, those who begin in the desert face a different, grueling preliminary trial: the journey to the mountain itself. This is the extra weight of systemic barriers, of foundational scarcity, of learning unspoken rules the hard way. It is immense, unfair, and exhausting. Yet, upon finally reaching that first rocky slope, a profound alchemy occurs. The very struggle that defined their approach has often built the muscles needed for the ascent—resilience, ingenuity, and a ferocious will. The work of climbing the mountain, of mastering a craft, of building something meaningful, now begins in earnest. And it is the same core work. The desert forged an exceptional climber, but the mountain’s height is unchanged.
This is not to dismiss the brutal realities of inequality. The journey to the base camp is a real and often unjust hardship. But we must separate that preliminary journey from the climb of success itself. The writer must still face the blank page, whether they graduated from an Ivy League school or studied in a library after their shift. The entrepreneur must still navigate product-market fit, whether funded by an inheritance or by a second mortgage. The artist must still refine their vision through endless iteration, whether they have a studio or a corner of a kitchen table. The quality of attention required, the depth of understanding needed, the number of repetitions necessary to achieve excellence—these are non-negotiable currencies. They cannot be outsourced or inherited.
Recognizing this truth is both daunting and liberating. It is daunting because it strips away our excuses. No starting point, however difficult, absolves us from the fundamental labor of becoming competent, then proficient, then exceptional. But it is profoundly liberating because it means the key to the summit is not held by those who started higher; it is held within the effort we are all capable of mustering. Our energy is best spent not in lamenting the coordinates of our origin, but in engaging with the work directly in front of us—the next page, the next problem, the next skill.
Success, in its truest sense, is not an elevation on a map. It is the strength you build in your legs, the clarity you gain in your vision, and the wisdom you earn from the thin air of perseverance. That strength, that clarity, that wisdom—they are only forged one way: by doing the work. And that volume of work, that essential transformation, is a mountain that stands equal before us all.
