You can’t Google experience or perspective. Experience is accumulated over time and highly dependent on context and circumstance. If you were raised in a small, rural town or an urban housing project, you likely didn’t imagine growing up to be an oncologist, an epidemiologist, an electrical engineer, a video game designer, a real estate developer, or a hedge fund manager.
I was born to a working-class family in Northeast Philadelphia. My parents divorced when I was only eighteen months old. My mother moved the two of us to rural Maryland outside of Washington, D.C. and remarried. My biological father was a public school teacher in inner-city Philadelphia. He taught industrial arts, which was highly respected in the blue-collar community in which he lived. Most people in his neighborhood didn’t go to college and worked in trades as both my grandfathers and their brothers did – carpenters, plumbers, printers, and mechanics. My parents were the first in my family to go to college (my mother earned an associate degree to become an office manager and bookkeeper. Later she earned her teaching degree.). My stepfather, who raised me, earned an engineering degree, which he used to become a career bureaucrat in the Federal Government (when he wasn’t an electronics salesman). His father managed a liquor store in Southeast D.C. near Anacostia.
My universe was either tradesmen and teachers in Philly or shop keepers, farmers, and civil servants in Maryland. I also knew of doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, and lawyers. That was my universe. Those were the professions from which I could choose. Blood and guts made me nauseous, so nothing in the medical field for me. I was told I should be a lawyer because I talked a lot (not sure anyone in my town understood what lawyers do). According to my sixth-grade career assessment, I should’ve become a baker.
My frame of reference was limited. It was as if I woke up in the Middle Ages or the middle of the ocean; water in every direction for as far as I could see. I had no point of reference and no direction. I didn’t know which way to go; I didn’t even know what my choices of destination were. The feeling of being lost at sea is how it feels for many young people growing up in America.
Simply telling children they can be whatever they want is unhelpful at best, and more likely pernicious, when they don’t know what is possible or how to achieve it. Sure, accomplishing big goals takes dedication, resilience, sacrifice, and hard work. But even if someone has the character, the will, the grit, the intelligence, and the tenacity to do the hard work, it is meaningless if they do not know how, where, or when to apply any of it.
No one succeeds on their own. Seriously, sit down on the floor, pull on your bootstraps, and see if you can get up on your feet by yourself (it’s physics; it doesn’t work). I’m not saying that some people aren’t smarter than others. I’m not suggesting that there aren’t once-in-a-generation genius visionaries, or that some people are more persistent or resilient than others. We are not all gifted equally, but we are equally gifted. Each of us is on a personal journey to discover our unique talent, skill, or passion. Every explorer needs a guide, a sherpa, a guru, a mentor; someone who has successfully made the journey, who can distinguish between what is helpful and what is harmful, identify milestones and markers, find and utilize resources, and encourage you when you have doubt.
It is often said that the key to success is not what you know, but who you know. The most important thing to know is someone who can advise and guide you. Many people take that for granted. No one wants a handout, but at some point, everyone needs a hand up. Find someone to mentor. Pay it forward.
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