Staying Behind: When Staying Becomes a Promise

There is a word I only came across relatively recently that, strangely enough, describes a huge part of my life: restanza. I didn’t know there was a word for it. For me, it was never an anthropological or sociological concept. It was something much more concrete: staying close to my family. I am an only child, and that has shaped my choices in ways I didn’t fully understand for many years. In my family, emigration was never presented as some great adventure. There was no romantic image of the young man leaving with a suitcase, going somewhere far away, making his fortune, and building a new life somewhere else. Leaving meant, above all, that you had failed to find your place at home. It was a social defeat. If you had to leave Naples to find work, it meant you hadn’t managed to fit into your own environment, find a path, or build a life where you were born.

That idea was so deeply ingrained that even employment was viewed through the lens of your ability to build relationships. My mother, for example, believed I needed to find someone who could pull strings for me. And this is where one of the most revealing contradictions in my story begins: she was the first to go to church, pray, and recite the Rosary, but she didn’t cultivate relationships in the back rooms of the church or among the people who actually had influence. She prayed, but she didn’t network. 

Yet she expected me to find someone willing to help me. When you come from a family without important connections, the problem isn’t simply finding a job. It’s finding someone who can open a door for you. And if that door can’t be opened by your father, your mother, an uncle, or a grandfather, then you look elsewhere. In the logic I grew up with, even a romantic relationship could become a form of social mobility. What could matter was the family of the woman you might marry: her social position, her connections, the possibility that she had a father, grandfather, uncle, or an influential relative who could lend a hand. I even had a family example right in front of me: someone I knew had managed to get into the workforce because his father-in-law had used his connections to help him. The message was simple: if your own family has no one who can put in a good word for you, perhaps you need to marry into a family that does. It may sound bizarre today, but back then it seemed almost natural. Because a family’s wealth isn’t measured only in money. It is also measured in people: who you know, who can make a phone call for you, who can introduce you, who can say your name in the right room. What we would now call social capital.

I never wanted to turn my life into a strategy built around connections. I didn’t look for a partner because of the family she came from, nor did I see marriage as a possible way into a job. I carried another belief that was even stronger: I had to make it here. I wanted to find my place in Naples without leaving. In that sense, staying was also a challenge. I wanted to prove that you could build something without abandoning the place you came from and, above all, without leaving your family behind. Being an only child made that even more concrete. Leaving didn’t simply mean moving to another city. It meant being farther away from my mother, from the responsibility of being there, and from the belief that your life should remain tied to the family you were born into. Staying therefore became, all at once, an act of love, a responsibility, and a test of whether I could succeed.

But that belief came with a price. If you couldn’t find work, it became difficult to blame everything on the lack of opportunities around you. You had to ask yourself what you hadn’t done enough. If other people found a way forward while you remained on the outside, you could eventually start thinking that you were the problem. Not the place. Not the system. You. That is where restanza stops being merely a geographic choice and becomes a psychological one. You can stay out of love, responsibility, or loyalty, but you can also stay because you are afraid that leaving would mean admitting you couldn’t make it. For a long time, those things were impossible for me to separate. I stayed because I was an only child, because I wanted to be close to my family, because emigration had always been presented to me as surrender, and because I wanted to prove that I could build my life in Naples.

Today I can look at all of this with more distance. I no longer believe that everyone who leaves is a loser, and I don’t believe that everyone who stays is automatically a winner. You can leave because you have no choice, but you can also leave because you are brave. You can stay because you love someone, but you can also stay because you are afraid. The difference, perhaps, isn’t the distance you travel. It is the reason you choose one direction over another. And that leads me to the hardest question. Not “Why didn’t I leave?”, and not even “Why couldn’t I find someone to pull strings for me?” The question is: “How much of my life was actually chosen by me?” When you grow up in a family that treats staying rooted as a form of success, eventually you have to learn to distinguish loyalty from fear, love from duty, choice from the inability to choose. Maybe growing up means having the courage to question what you were taught, your entire life, to call success and failure.

I still don’t know whether my restanza was a victory. I only know that it was my life. And perhaps, after almost fifty years, I can finally stop asking myself whether I was good enough at staying. I can ask myself a different question, one that is simpler and perhaps much harder:

If I had been completely free to choose, without worrying about disappointing anyone, would I have stayed anyway?

The Privilege of Not Needing a Favor

Can you make it in life without connections?

Yes.

Millions of people do it every day.

They study. They work. They apply. They get rejected. They try again. They move to another city. They change careers. They build businesses from scratch. They take exams, lose opportunities, and keep going until eventually something works.

No powerful friend makes a call.

No family name opens the door.

No one whispers their name into the right ear.

And yet they move forward.

We tend to forget these people because their success doesn't make a good story.

In a culture obsessed with connections, it's much more satisfying to believe that everyone who gets ahead must know someone.

It isn't true.

But there is an important distinction we rarely make.

Connections are not the same thing as favors.

Knowing people matters. Reputation matters. Networking matters. A trusted introduction can change a career.

If someone tells an employer, “You should meet this person. They're smart, reliable, and good at what they do,” that's not necessarily corruption or nepotism.

That's a recommendation.

Someone is putting their reputation behind you.

If you fail, they may lose credibility too.

That's very different from saying:

“Hire this person. They're one of ours.”

The first opens a door.

The second can bypass the test.

And that's where the uncomfortable question begins.

What is a person worth when someone else's influence has to substitute for their own ability?

That's why, in the most negative sense of the word, the person who lives entirely by favors is not necessarily the privileged one.

They may actually be the most dependent person in the room.

A favor can become a debt

This is the part nobody likes to talk about.

A favor doesn't always come with a contract.

Sometimes it comes with memory.

“I got you in.”

“Don't forget who helped you.”

“I made that call for you.”

Maybe nobody ever asks for anything in return.

But you remember.

And because you remember, you may feel obligated.

That's the hidden cost of being handed an opportunity.

The job may be yours.

But the favor belongs to someone else.

And that can become a strange kind of psychological debt.

The person who helped you may eventually need something from you.

A vote.

A signature.

A phone call.

A favor of their own.

And suddenly what looked like privilege starts to look like dependence.

Some professions don't tolerate incompetence for long

There are careers where connections can get you an opportunity but cannot manufacture competence.

A doctor may be introduced by a powerful person, but patients still need treatment.

A surgeon may come from a prominent family, but nobody can operate on a patient for them.

A pilot may have influential parents, but an airplane still has to land safely.

An engineer may have an impressive network, but a bridge does not stay standing because of someone's last name.

A lawyer may get an introduction to a prestigious firm, but eventually they have to know the law.

A scientist may get access to a laboratory through a connection, but the research still has to survive scrutiny.

The same is true in countless ordinary professions.

A contractor can get a job through a friend. An electrician can be recommended by a neighbor. A consultant can get a meeting because someone knows them.

But if they consistently do bad work, people eventually find out.

A connection can open the door. It cannot permanently negotiate with reality.

The real test comes later

That's why the most revealing moment isn't when someone gets the job.

It's what happens afterward.

The boss changes.

The company changes.

The political climate changes.

The person who made the introduction retires.

The powerful friend loses influence.

The family name no longer carries the same weight.

And suddenly there is no one left to make the call.

Then comes the question that cannot be avoided:

What can you actually do on your own?

If the answer is “a lot,” then perhaps the connection was simply an introduction.

If the answer is “not much,” then the connection didn't build a career.

It only postponed the moment when the person would have to prove themselves.

The family that refused to use its power

I once came across the story of an important, well-connected family that could easily have used its influence to establish its children.

They knew the right people.

They had the social standing.

They had access to doors that most people would struggle even to find.

They could have made the calls.

They could have asked for favors.

They could have kept their children close and placed them comfortably within the family's own professional and social circle.

Instead, they did something almost counterintuitive.

They sent their children away.

Away to study.

Away to build professional networks.

Away from the environment where their last name already meant something.

Not because the family lacked influence.

Precisely because it had influence.

They understood something many powerful families don't.

Every favor creates the possibility of an obligation.

Every shortcut can become a form of dependency.

And sometimes the greatest gift you can give your children is not a door you can open for them.

It's the freedom to discover whether they can open one themselves.

There is dignity in starting somewhere nobody knows your name

Imagine walking into a room where nobody knows your father.

Nobody knows your mother.

Nobody knows your family.

Nobody cares who your friends are.

Your last name means nothing.

Your résumé has to speak for itself.

Your work has to speak for itself.

Your character has to speak for itself.

It can be harder.

It can be slower.

You may fail.

You may have to start again.

But if you eventually succeed, something belongs entirely to you.

Not the opportunity, perhaps.

Not the circumstances.

But the reputation you built afterward.

And that is a kind of wealth that cannot be inherited.

Social capital isn't the problem

This is where the debate about networking and privilege often becomes simplistic.

We shouldn't pretend that relationships don't matter.

They do.

Nobody succeeds entirely alone.

Everyone benefits from teachers, mentors, colleagues, friends, clients, partners, and people willing to vouch for them.

That's human society.

The problem begins when relationships stop amplifying merit and start replacing it.

That's the line.

A good network can make your abilities visible.

A favor can make an unqualified person look qualified.

A strong reputation can create opportunities.

Nepotism can create positions.

Those are not the same thing.

And perhaps the healthiest form of social capital is not having hundreds of powerful people you can call.

It's knowing that you could call them—and choosing not to.

Some people would rather owe themselves

There are people who simply don't like owing anyone.

They would rather work harder.

They would rather wait.

They would rather move.

They would rather send out a hundred résumés.

They would rather fail an exam and take it again.

They would rather hear “no” ten times than know that their “yes” came from someone else's influence.

Not because they're morally superior.

Not because they're naïve.

Because they want something very simple:

to know that what they have is theirs.

That's why I find the story of that family so interesting.

They had the power to make life easier for their children.

Instead, they used their power to give their children distance from that power.

They didn't necessarily make their children richer.

They made them more independent.

And independence may be the most valuable inheritance of all.

The freedom to say: I did this myself

Perhaps that's the real difference between social capital and dependency.

Social capital says:

“Let me introduce you.”

Dependency says:

“Let me get you in.”

Social capital says:

“Someone should know about your work.”

Dependency says:

“Don't worry about whether you're qualified.”

One creates opportunity.

The other can create entitlement.

One can strengthen a person.

The other can leave them permanently dependent on the person who opened the door.

So yes, you can live without connections.

It may take longer.

It may be harder.

It may not always be fair.

But it is possible.

And there is a particular kind of freedom in being able to look at your life and say:

Nobody got this for me.

Maybe somebody gave you advice.

Maybe somebody introduced you.

Maybe somebody believed in you.

That's fine.

But you did the rest.

You built the skills.

You earned the reputation.

You survived the failures.

You stayed when it got difficult.

And when the powerful people disappear, when the phone stops ringing, when nobody is there to put in a good word, you still have something left.

You.

Maybe that's not the shortest road to success.

But when you finally get there, you don't owe the destination to anyone.