If someone came up to you and asked what you thought the purpose of your own life was, what would be your answer? If you're like millions of others, you'd probably say something along the lines of "achieving inner peace" or "being happy." This is a reasonable response, and not only because of the ubiquity of that answer—if given the choice, who wouldn't want to be happy? The thing is, though, there are implications within that concept that we don't always recognize in our day-to-day lives. The first is the idea of us being able to choose to be happy, or rather to pursue happiness; the other is the fact that happiness even occurs to us as an answer to that question at all. 

If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million times—America was founded on those famous, or perhaps infamous, three ideals: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What does that mean? It means that all Americans have the right to live a life devoid of oppression; that we're all given the innate right to be free; and, lastly, to do with that what we will so that we might know happiness. 

Usually at this point in the conversation people are thinking about what that means for them as individuals—what foundations will I build my life on to create a life worth living?—and while it is a fundamental right for them to do so, it misses the point that other people and places have been trying to make for decades: how lucky we are to be able to actually do that.

Centuries ago, life wasn't lived with the ideas of entertainment or happiness in mind. That's not to say that everything was miserable, but when whether or not you'd be sleeping in a house at night was dependent on your ability to build a decent house, there wouldn't have been a lot of time for merrymaking. Things were going to be hard unless you changed them, and that was the way of the world. Vast clusters of conglomerates, massive cities built on industry, and the swift ease of modern technology didn't exist yet. Back then there was just green grass, blue sky, and a whole lot of work to be done—work that you were going to do, whether you wanted to or not.

So naturally, the fact that we can live in the modern day and choose whether or not we even want to get up on Sunday morning is pretty monumental. For our ancestors, things like pleasure almost always took a backseat to everything else. Now that we can build off of what they created, metaphorically and physically, it's become uncommon for us to even recognize the implications of something like happiness being a goal that we can pursue every day. The sheer difference between our lives and the lives of our country's founders is huge, and we, individually and as a society, sometimes lose sight of how lucky we are to have been given a blueprint to life in the form of literature, architecture, and records where the people before us had nothing. 

The other piece of the equation is the fact that happiness is something we can go after at all, because for countless others throughout history (and even right now), happiness was about the most far-off thing on anyone's minds. If they were asked what the point of their life was, many people likely would have said, "To not suffer." And even more than that, others would have sadly stated, "Just to suffer less." Something we'd do well to recognize is our privilege in pursuing happiness when others are merely trying not to hurt.

This goes many ways and applies in more ways than one, because as it is with most other things, privilege is a spectrum; my point, though, is that there are thousands of things other people go through every day that we don't even realize are happening, from giant country-wide massacres to individuals whose worlds are made mostly of pain. For people in these types of situations, hardship is regular and expected; a good day is not one in which something particularly beneficial happens, but rather a day where nothing particularly catastrophic occurs. Happiness isn't built on an abundance of positive feelings, but a lack of negative ones. 

Such a fundamental difference in living is difficult to grasp initially, but it's something that's necessary as part of the remedy to a privileged country turning its head at the plight of the rest of the world. And while this article is primarily about present-day American privilege when compared with our ancestors or other third-world lifestyles, the privilege problem isn't reserved for every American either.  

Think about it—are there homeless people in your city? Those folks are probably just trying to get through the day, too. And while American homelessness is different from being homeless due to post-war marauding, the degree to which different individuals suffer isn't the point, and neither is comparing two people's pain. Our purpose is merely to recognize our personal privilege in a world where hardship and suffering has grown rampant, and to stay awake and aware to opportunities that might help us change that.

However, recognizing privilege isn't about placing blame or pushing guilt—pointing fingers is hurtful and useless, and being angry at people who seem to have things better than you isn't going to change your situation. We don't get to choose the circumstances into which we're born, so we need to try to stay away from blaming ourselves and each other. We need, instead, to ask ourselves: what is it about my situation, upbringing, or existence that invites special opportunities other people don't get? Is there anything I can do about that? Am I staying aware and grateful of these benefits and working to change the narrow-mindedness they stem from?

Recognition is the first step to change. Once we start realizing how lucky we are to be able to do things like enjoy ourselves, spend time on leisure activities, and pursue happiness, we can work on spreading those opportunities around the world and making sure that every person has these chances. Then and only then can we consider everyone's circumstances equal.