One of my doctors was telling me about his path into medicine. He attended a highly prestigious private school. He went on to say that there, he met a mentor who connected him with someone at Georgetown University. That relationship helped open the door to medical school. Then he said, “Isn’t that how it works?”
He wasn’t being insensitive or boasting, only describing the world as he has experienced it. But standing there with him, I was struck by how different our worlds have been.
I was the second unwanted girl in my family. The boys received the resources. My sister and I experienced childhood sexual abuse. We were told we didn’t need college educations because we could marry men who would take care of us. Our brothers, we were told, needed an education because they would have families to support. (One of them never had children, although both my sister and I did, and eventually became single parents.)
The family system was organized so the resources flowed toward them. Opportunity accumulated around them. My sister and I learned that our futures mattered less. That is also “how it works.”
Today, my doctor visits art exhibitions in famous museums around the world. I spend my time asking for injections that reduce my pain enough that I can keep trying to build an income while recovering from a lifetime of abuse, including by men whose own positions were shaped by privilege and power. These are not simply different life choices, but different developmental environments.
From the perspective of Interpersonal Neurobiology, relationships and environments shape development. They shape expectations, confidence, opportunity, health, education, and the social networks that become available over time. Every relationship either expands or constrains what becomes possible next.
When someone grows up surrounded by mentors, educational opportunities, financial stability, and people who know people, those advantages can become invisible. They feel normal. It becomes easy to assume everyone has similar access if they simply work hard enough.
That is one way privilege maintains itself. Not necessarily through arrogance or bad intentions, but through limited awareness of experiences outside one’s own.
When I heard, “Isn’t that how it works?” I was reminded that many people have never had to imagine what life looks like when there is no mentor, private school education, or introductions. When there is no family encouraging your education, no financial safety net, and no one opening doors.
Some people inherit relationships that create opportunities. Others inherit relationships that create obstacles and setbacks. Neither group builds their understanding of the world in isolation. We all make sense of reality from the environments that raised us. If we never examine those environments, we can mistake our own experience for the universal experience.
Understanding that difference does not assign blame. It reveals more of the picture. Because “how it works” depends a great deal on where you were when your life began.
