“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
I want to always remember the number 6.65 million. That's the number of people in the world who will make less than each of the Harvard Business School graduates this year. $25,000 a year is enough to put you in the top 1% of incomes worldwide. Meanwhile, the average starting salary for HBS graduates last year was $95,000. That puts each graduate in the top 0.2% of the global income distribution. In other words, this year's graduates will make more than 5.99 billion of the 6 billion people on earth – or 6.65 million for each one of us. This is why I always want to remember 6.65 million.
What will I do with this knowledge? Give away my salary to charity or dedicate my life to social equity? Probably not. Respect others and find opportunities to positively impact my community? Most likely. Be thankful for my blessings and humble in my accomplishments? Absolutely.
A lot of luck along with some measure of hard work has placed me in the group of 900 and not the group of 6.65 million. How will I measure my own success? Not by accomplishments relative to my peers in the group of 900 but by always remembering that the 6.65 million are also my peers.
— Joshua Jarrett