My father is a very structured and tidy person, and back in my childhood, he demanded his kids to be the same way. When I was little, he always told me to get prepared for the things that I needed to bring the next day to school or any important events and not to delay things I could do right away. He told me to categorize things based on small things, be they alphabetically or colors, or numbers. When I graduated from undergrad college, he stopped any monthly financial support right away, but he left me a precious skill that is worth sustainable income in life.

This year, for the very first time in my life, I have access to extremely privileged societies. I had the rare chance in my young life to see how these people think to run their business and how easily they put a big investment to lose just to gamble on the system that we designed for the next phase. I don’t have that kind of access, but I’m lucky enough to see that everyone has their own way of reacting to the access they got. Mostly, wealth. It’s very interesting to see how people make decisions with wealth on their hands. Then, university degrees. I’ve seen people with a college degree that they obtained after 10 years on campus make wiser decisions compared to those with higher ones overseas (just check Juliari Batubara's profile on Wikipedia). This, of course, applies only case by case, and lots of confounding variables take place, such as age, experience, and social support.

I see the quote “count your blessings” differently. As I still oppose creationism as I write this article, however, “blessing” can be translated as “something that happened in coincidence but turned into a life-changing moment”. Access to things that we’re good at is a blessing. In a lot of successful people I’ve observed, their parents were financially capable of paying for their English courses, and in some others got, their parents were kind enough to get their kids to try as many things as possible to get their own access to a better life.

I realized this much when I watched The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix (oh, and my father taught me chess in elementary school and never let me win easily - he really trained me to think in structure). Meeting Mr. Shaibel was a blessing for Beth, as well as getting adopted by Alma. Having friends like Benny, Harry, and Jolene was also a blessing for her. All giving her access to not only a chess prodigy - but also a World Champion. If we think about it - the universe is a collection of coincidences, and I think that’s what makes our life better - or worse. The access war I’m curious to see in the next quarter is vaccine access - as rich countries already secure most doses available, enough to protect their citizens, for example, in Canada, five times what's actually needed. Let’s see if the unbalanced resource access really affects the global Homo sapiens population, and just like how the virus has changed our lives this year, it will show the true colors of our species.