I was raised to believe America rewards hard work. But I was also raised to understand that luck plays a role in even the bootstrappiest success story. The cost of living the dream, I was taught, is the responsibility to expand it for others. It’s a more than fair price.

The American Dream has been sold not only on Americans, but also on the rest of the world. It’s the promise of upward mobility. If you put in the hours, if you grind it out, you can rise above your humble origins. A middle class life awaits you. Or, if you were born into an upper middle class existence, maybe a future career in the White House awaits you.

That’s the somewhat unlikely story of David Litt, author of Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years. He’s the one on the left. (That other guy has written a few books of his own too.) And he managed to land a job as a speechwriter for Barack Obama thanks, in no small part, to privilege.

You see, here’s the thing about privilege. Or the things (plural), rather. First, privilege is often invisible to those who have it. Second, you need not be ashamed of your privilege or the advantages you enjoy; you should, however, endeavor to leverage those advantages to help those who may not have been so lucky. As David Litt so eloquently puts it, “It’s more than a fair price.”

I guess I thought walking through the White House gates instantly makes you better, stronger, and more capable than before. It doesn’t. While my job was more exciting, the rest of me remained fundamentally unimproved. This was grossly unfair. Every day, my unchanged abilities were pitted against drastically heightened expectations.

Here’s one more thing about privilege. It might indeed open the door for you. It might even give you that gentle nudge to get you through the door. But, once you’re on the other side, you still need to do the work. Just because someone else opened a door for you doesn’t change who are you on the inside. It only changes how people might see you from the outside.

You also don’t know what you’re capable of doing until you’re forced to do it. In one passage in Thanks, Obama, David Litt describes his interview process with the White House. He’s asked to write an impromptu two-page speech in 40 minutes. For context, he’d been allotted about two weeks to do the same at his previous job. But, he did it. And he got the job.

Litt even went on to sing the Golden Girls theme song to President Obama.

I’d often heard senior staff describe President Obama as the smartest guy in the room, but only now did I realize what they meant. He didn’t speak seven languages or know the Latin names of species or multiply large numbers in his head. What he did, more quickly than anyone, was strip away complicated issues to their essence and make the most of the information obtained. No one was better at getting to the point.

Just as we can learn a lot from a pre-presidential Barack Obama, we can learn a lot from his White House years too. Like how, even in the face of adversity and hardship, we can still hope for positive change. It can be that simple. In a complicated kind of way.

Thanks, Obama.

And thank you, David Litt.