Recently a reader asked me, “If it’s true that we choose our parents, why isn’t everyone choosing parents who are wealthy or royal so they have a good life?“
This is a common and very understandable question. On the surface, it makes perfect sense. If souls really do have a say in where they incarnate, why not pick a life of comfort, privilege, and financial security? Why not choose palaces instead of paychecks, luxury instead of limitation?
The answer lies in what a soul actually defines as a “good life.”
Wealth Does Not Exempt Anyone From the Human Condition
One of the biggest misconceptions I see is the idea that money or status somehow shields people from pain, fear, grief, or existential struggle. It doesn’t. Privileged children still experience loneliness, anxiety, pressure, trauma, illness, loss, and identity crises. In many cases, those struggles are simply less visible from the outside.
History is full of wealthy heirs and royal figures who battled depression, addiction, strained relationships, or profound unhappiness. Think of royal families plagued by rigid expectations, loveless marriages arranged for political gain, or the constant scrutiny of public life. Modern celebrity culture offers similar examples. Fame and wealth often magnify emotional wounds rather than heal them.
From a soul’s perspective, suffering is not measured by bank balances. Pain still hurts, regardless of how beautiful the surroundings may look.
Power and Wealth Come With Serious Tradeoffs
High status lives are rarely free lives.
Royalty and elite families come with obligations that begin at birth. Your role is chosen for you. Your future is often scripted. Who you marry, where you live, how you behave, and what you represent are all tightly controlled. Privacy becomes a luxury you no longer possess.
There is also the very real danger that comes with being a high profile target. Wealth and power attract obsession, manipulation, betrayal, and sometimes violence. Throughout history, royal children have been imprisoned, exiled, assassinated, or used as pawns in power struggles. Even today, prominent families live behind security gates, bodyguards, and constant vigilance.
Some souls are not interested in living under a microscope or being shaped into a symbol rather than allowed to discover who they truly are.
The Loss of Freedom Is a Big Deal for Many Souls
A life of privilege often means less personal freedom, not more.
You may have access to material comfort, but your choices are limited by expectations, legacy, and image. Your mistakes are public. Your failures are magnified. Your personal struggles become headlines or family scandals.
Many souls value autonomy far more than comfort. They want the freedom to explore, fail, reinvent themselves, and live quietly if they choose. From that perspective, a modest upbringing can offer more spiritual flexibility than a gilded cage.
Souls Choose for Growth, Not Convenience
When I look at life through a soul lens, I see incarnation choices being made for growth, contrast, healing, and expansion. Souls are not shopping for the easiest life. They are choosing environments that will challenge specific fears, beliefs, attachments, or unresolved themes from other lifetimes.
Some souls incarnate into wealth to learn humility, generosity, or the emptiness of material excess. Others incarnate into scarcity to learn resilience, creativity, compassion, or self worth independent of possessions. Neither path is better or worse. They simply teach different lessons.
A soul that has already experienced power or privilege many times may deliberately choose a simpler or more difficult life to balance that experience. Growth often happens at the edges of comfort, not in its center.
Even “Ideal” Lives Come With Hidden Struggles
From the outside, it can look like wealthy or royal children are winning at life before it even starts. But inside those lives are pressures to perform, to uphold legacy, to meet impossible standards, or to sacrifice personal truth for duty.
I have worked with many clients who came from affluent or influential families and felt emotionally neglected, controlled, or invisible. Money provided opportunity, but it did not provide safety, unconditional love, or inner peace.
No incarnation is immune to heartbreak, loss, or self doubt. The human experience levels everyone eventually.
A Good Life Is Not the Same as an Easy Life
From a spiritual perspective, a good life is one that offers meaningful experiences, emotional depth, opportunities for healing, and the chance to evolve consciousness. Ease and luxury are not prerequisites for that, and sometimes they actively get in the way.
If everyone chose wealth or royalty, entire dimensions of human experience would be left unexplored. Compassion would stagnate. Empathy would shrink. Souls would miss out on the profound growth that comes from struggle, connection, perseverance, and shared humanity.
When you zoom out far enough, you start to see that souls are not trying to “win” at being human. They are trying to understand it.
And that understanding often comes not from having everything handed to you, but from discovering who you are when it isn’t.
