Back to the issue of choices...
I have 2 siblings, an older sister and a younger brother.
We were all raised in the same house in a pretty much stereotypical middle class nuclear family.
All of us had essentially the same primary education and more or less the same opportunity for college.
My sister went the college route, after a disastrously abusive marriage to a moron and after coming home after disappearing for a year mom and dad helped her get back on track and into Jr. College, where she continued for the next 14-15 years acquiring a number of assoc. degrees none of which she uses. Of course after getting knocked up and the baby daddy dropping of the face of the earth she was able to get on the welfare ride where she was able to get money from the government as well as mom & dad and continue her life as a perpetual student. She attended a variety of local colleges, tech programs and the last go was Beauty School. All of this funded by a combination of government hand outs and mom's ( the primary enabler)checkbook.
At 52 She now lives in a run down mobile home ( it was nice enough when the folks bought it for her) and makes her living by an assortment of odd jobs, government handouts and part time pot sales.
Her son is a whole chapter on his own which would include drug and alcohol related interaction with the law. Never his fault of course.
My younger brother and I both went Navy, both took technical(electronics) training paths and both wound up with working for the same company by 2000.
Little brother managed to get himself fired for cause and now works grunt labor making air handlers. His path included 2.5 failed marriages and a refusal to even consider additional tech training. Both of his kids are decent with only his son having a minor brush with the law.
I was the bad child, the black sheep likely bound for prison.
I have a solid job, make decent money, been married to the same woman for more than 30 years and own my own home. Both of my kids are on there way to making a decent life for themselves, neither having been in trouble with the law.
Of the 3 of us kids I'm the only one that's never seen a jail cell from the inside.
I've made a few bad choices and had some setbacks but worked through them.
3 people with mostly identical opportunity with 3 different outcomes due to the choices we made
How a person's life works out is mostly about the choices they make for themselves. The rest is about how we handle the crap sandwiches life throws at us.