<i>The cliche that "life is what you make of it" is actually true. In a free and developed country, whatever job, friends, or relationships you have are all dependent on you.</i><p>No, you have <i>some</i> power.<p>Let's ignore random events that can happen to everyone regardless of their starting condition (i.e getting run over by a car).<p>Even with those out, you cannot chose to be born with caring or rich parents, or to have been raised in an environment where your drunk father didn't hit your crack addicted mom, for example.<p>Now, despite those things, is it possible to make to it to achieve some X? Well, people have achieved any given X (like: being a rich entrepreneur, a famous actor, a great scientist, a good parent, etc) from very different starting points, including unfavorable ones.<p>But this "life's what you make it" thing misses one basic point: that the WORK and CIRCUMSTANCIAL LUCK needed to achieve X varies widely based on the starting point. A poor black kid born in the 1920 would have zero chance to become, say, the President. As would an atheist, cross-dressing communist. But if you think those are extremes, consider that people from poop backgrounds are much less likely to become, say, doctors that people from rich families and/or people with doctors as parents.<p>So, "like if what you make it" can be better rephrased as: "life is what you make it, but for a lot of people it takes 10 times the effort other people to make it the same thing, and/or extremely rare lucky breaks".