My father is a taxi driver, and my mother ran a small business. I

Hear the words of Robert Rinder, a man who rose from humble beginnings to stand among the voices of law: “My father is a taxi driver, and my mother ran a small business. I hadn't even met a barrister before I got my first shot at the legal profession. But back then, I was lucky enough to be given a break—I can't help but wonder if I would be so lucky today.” These words are not a boast, but a meditation on fortune, opportunity, and the barriers that stand between the common person and the halls of power.

When Rinder recalls his father the taxi driver and his mother who ran a small business, he roots his identity in the soil of the working class. His story is not born of privilege but of toil and perseverance, a reminder that greatness can spring from the humblest of origins. Yet he confesses that he had not even met a barrister, one of the esteemed voices of justice, before stepping into that world himself. This is the gap that lies between ordinary families and the corridors of influence: a gap not only of wealth, but of access, of networks, of unseen doors that privilege alone can open.

The heart of his reflection lies in the phrase: “I was lucky enough to be given a break.” He acknowledges that his rise was not built on talent alone, nor effort alone, but also upon the fragile, unpredictable hand of opportunity. Someone gave him a chance. Someone opened a door. Without that moment, perhaps the story would have been different. And so he wonders whether, in today’s world—where competition is fiercer, inequality wider, and networks more guarded—the same door would be opened for a young man of his background.

History offers us many examples of this truth. Consider the tale of Abraham Lincoln, born in a log cabin to poor farmers, who had little formal schooling but taught himself law by firelight, borrowing books where he could. In another age, his humble origins might have barred him from public life, but America, at that time, allowed such a man to rise through grit and the rare opportunities afforded him. His story, like Rinder’s, reminds us that talent without opportunity is like a seed without soil: full of promise, but unable to grow.

The meaning of Rinder’s words, then, is both personal and universal. Personal, because it speaks to his own gratitude and uncertainty. Universal, because it asks us to consider how many others—children of taxi drivers, shopkeepers, and laborers—have equal talent but lack the chance to show it. It is a quiet rebuke to systems that close doors, and a call to create societies where opportunity is not hoarded by the privileged few, but shared with the many.

This teaching is heroic in its humility. For Rinder does not claim that he succeeded by his own strength alone, but that luck and kindness played their part. He reminds us that the path to justice is not only about individual will, but about collective responsibility—mentors who lift the young, institutions that open doors, and communities that refuse to let background determine destiny.

Children of tomorrow, let this lesson burn within you: if you rise, remember those who come after you. If a door was opened for you, open another for someone else. Do not allow society to become a place where only the privileged inherit opportunity, while the talented poor remain unheard. In your daily lives, support systems of fairness—scholarships, mentorships, apprenticeships—that widen the circle of possibility.

Thus the wisdom of Rinder’s words endures: that opportunity is the bridge between potential and achievement, and that luck, while precious, must be made less necessary through justice and generosity. Build a world where the child of a taxi driver may stand equal to the child of a lord, and where talent, not privilege, lights the path to greatness. This is the inheritance we must leave, the teaching we must pass down, and the call we must answer in our own time.