Have you “made it” yet? What does that mean to you? To me that question is synonymous with: “have you achieved what you wanted to?” or “are you happy with your life?".
I know I've definitely made it. I am married to the person I love. I'm healthy. All my life I've lived in first world countries (some may argue that Poland is not exactly a first-world country, but its big cities definitely are, certain areas may be a bit less fancy but they're not third world quality either.): Poland, Ireland, Japan and Australia, where I've never had to worry a lot about personal safety, war or hunger. I've been able to do things I love: play instruments, work in jobs I really like, travel and meet people from all over the world, learn languages. I considered myself to be blessed to have experienced all this goodness. It's been a wonderful life so far.
How did I get here? Did I come from a wealthy family? Was I privileged over my peers? Was I talented more than others? Here's my story.
My parents were not wealthy. When I was a kid the Communism was still in power in Poland. I was born in 1976 and the Commies got booted as late as 1989. In the 80s Polish economy was in a really bad shape, food was rationed and there was f***-all in the stores. A particular shopping-related memory of many Polish people from that period is queuing up for green Cuban oranges. They only popped up in the stores before Christmas, making people form huge lines, quite often standing overnight in freezing cold in front of the store. (December can be quite cold in Poland). I guess Cuba was the only orange-producing country that was also communist and that we could buy oranges from without using $USD. Poland probably shipped them some agricultural or industrial products in return (smart Cubans, machines cannot be sent unripe!). The supply chains back then must have been really inefficient and primitive so the Cubans picked the oranges while they were still unripe and unripe they arrived in Poland.
So until 1990s we were dirt poor by Western standards, an average monthly salary was a mere $7 USD ($17 USD in 2016 dollars)! Can you imagine surviving on it today? Well, a lot of stuff was also dirt cheap and Polish currency was so weak that the salaries expressed in USD seem laughable but it wasn't that bad. We could afford food (though nothing fancy, no tropical fruit or anything like that, just basics), clothing (again, mostly pretty drab Commie-era clothes or occasionally hand-me-downs from family abroad in the rotten West) and apartment was provided by my mom's employer. So not that bad after all. The weak Polish currency just meant that travelling to countries outside the Iron Curtain was prohibitively expensive, but the Commie block had plenty of interesting countries within in so some travel abroad was possible.
My parents were always supportive of (or at least were not actively discouraging) my interests. They helped me buy the first guitar, before I was making any serious money (I paid some portion of it by giving English lessons to high-school students like myself). They paid for my English courses and actually bought their first car (when I was 13-14) so they could drive me and my two friends to English lessons (we lived a fair distance outside of the big city). So it was my parents obviously who had the biggest positive impact on my education and interests. Later when I was in high school they didn't stop me from hitchhiking all over Europe for 2 months at a time on each summer break giving me an invaluable opportunity to taste independent life and use my English in real-life situations, not just in the classroom. In retrospect that was one of my forming experiences, where I picked up “wanderlust” and curiosity of the world (and haven't lost it so far, at 40 years old).
It's not that they were actively pushing me into those things, it wasn't really like that. My parents were pretty much hands-off with me. All those ideas were coming from me but they were very receptive to them and were not making me jump through too many hoops to pursue them. For that I remain very grateful to them. I think they did a great job and were pretty open-minded, considering their own much more limited opportunities and experiences during the Commie era. The best the parents can do sometimes is to stay out of their children's hair, difficult as it may sound, as some kids know very well what they want in life or at least they need the opportunity to try (and fail, as it may be occasionally). This quite lax upbringing meant I also was free to do some stupid stuff, which of course I did, such as drinking way too much alcohol or trying drugs. Thankfully I didn't destroy all of my brain cells doing that and seemingly what's left is still good enough to be a productive and prosperous member of a society (As a sidenote: I wonder if that speaks to the low standards societies have for their members? :-) But then again, you have to work with whatever material you get, cannot be too picky or you'd cast too many people outside the society)
When I was in high school I devoted my free time to mostly two things: playing guitar and learning English. I would spend 2-3 hours a day every day doing those two things. Learning English has handsomely paid off in that I was able to earn some money teaching English to others, doing translations and then landing a job in an English speaking country (Ireland) with an American company. Learning how to play guitar was maybe not monetarily profitable but I've made a lot of friends and met a lot of interesting folks over guitar. To this day it's a hobby that gives me a lot of pleasure.
In retrospect I wish I'd done more math-ey, science-y stuff in high school but then I somewhat made up for it a bit during university and later as an adult. However, if you read this and are young and interested in math/science I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's hard work but it's incredibly rewarding and also will set you up with a good job for life, most likely, so it's well worth the effort.
So my personal experience has been that to “make it” in life, some but not overly excessive privilege of being born in the right family, at the right time and right place is most likely necessary (though some people can overcome really tough circumstances, my hat is off to them but not everyone can do it) but not sufficient. Developing some hobbies and interests when I was young and had lots of free time to pursue them, some degree of perseverance in the said pursuits and being curious of what the world has to offer were the remaining ingredients. The times now are extremely interesting and the world is pretty much your oyster, you just have to choose action over inaction, exploration over stagnation, that may be actually the most important determinant of your success.