There are a lot of people who are "excited and interested" and never amount to anything because of the above mentioned "circumstances" that you were able to overcome, given a series of factors: natural predisposition, hard work, luck, gravity of the initial conditions and so on. Textbook survivorship bias.
A good work ethic isn't "luck". If someone has a good work ethic it's because the people in their life when they were growing up worked their butts off to give it to them. People don't escape poverty because of luck (look at lottery winner outcomes). They escape poverty after about three decades of hard work toward that goal, usually spread across multiple generations.
>Textbook survivorship bias.
Textbook "doesn't fit my narrative, find a way to discount it" bias.
> "Where does personal agency end and circumstances begin?"
If it's "I choose to work harder", it's personal agency. If it's "we're voting away support systems because I turned out OK and you should just work harder" it's not.