When You Can’t Have Something, You Get Good at What Can Replace It

For years, I thought my mother was doing it wrong.

She would go to church, kneel down, and pray the Rosary before the evening Mass. I used to tease her about it. In my mind, she was spending too much time in church and not enough time in the sacristy.

Because I had already convinced myself that I understood how the world worked.

I had watched people get ahead because they knew the right person. I had seen opportunities go to people who weren't necessarily the most talented or deserving, but who had a connection, a recommendation, someone willing to make a call on their behalf.

So I started paying attention to the people behind the doors.

I used to quote a line attributed to Giulio Andreotti: “God doesn't vote. Priests do.”

To me, it captured something essential about life. God might listen to your prayers, but people make decisions. People vote. People choose. People recommend. People open doors.

And there are certainly people who spend more time in sacristies than in churches—not because they are looking for God, but because they are looking for people. They understand that relationships can become opportunities, that information travels through networks, and that knowing the right person can sometimes take you farther than being the right person.

I didn't think I was being cynical.

I thought I was being realistic.

For a while, I believed that getting anywhere in life meant knowing somebody. And if you didn't know anybody, you were already behind.

Today, I think I was only half right.

My mother prayed. Perhaps God really did answer her prayers. The answer simply didn't arrive in the form she expected.

And, in the end, neither did mine.

Over the years, I began to look at luck differently. Richard Wiseman's The Luck Factor made me think about something I had never really considered: the difference between chance and serendipity.

Chance puts something in your path.

Serendipity is recognizing what it is when it gets there.

That distinction has mattered in my own life.

Some of the people who helped me appeared far away from the networks I once thought were so important. There was no powerful introduction, no carefully arranged recommendation, no influential person waiting behind a door.

Sometimes I simply found the right person.

Or perhaps, without realizing it, I had put myself in a position where the right person could find me.

That changed the way I think about opportunity.

Because there is a lesson hidden inside many of the things we don't get.

When you can't have something, you become strong at its alternatives.

If you can't rely on a recommendation, you learn how to create opportunities.

If nobody can open a door for you, you learn how to knock.

If you don't inherit a powerful network, you learn how to build relationships.

If you don't have someone to introduce you to the right person, you learn how to recognize that person when you meet them.

This doesn't mean disadvantages are secretly blessings. They aren't. Some people begin life with advantages that others simply don't have. Connections matter. Money matters. Social capital matters. Pretending otherwise is just another form of naivety.

But there is another truth that is easier to miss.

What you lack can force you to develop what you otherwise might never have learned.

The person who is always introduced may never learn how to introduce themselves.

The person who always has a door opened for them may never learn how to knock.

The person who has always had a network may never discover how resourceful they can become without one.

This is not a celebration of deprivation.

It is a recognition of human adaptability.

We tend to look at what other people have and ask why we don't have it.

The more useful question is different:

What can I become precisely because I don't have it?

That question changes everything.

It turns envy into curiosity.

It turns disadvantage into a challenge.

It turns waiting into movement.

And it turns the absence of an opportunity into the search for another one.

For a long time, I was looking for a hand to pull me forward.

A recommendation.

A connection.

An important person.

Someone who knew someone.

Then life taught me something much simpler.

The hand I found most often was the one at the end of my own arm.

That doesn't mean we don't need other people. We do. Nobody builds a meaningful life entirely alone. Other people matter. Relationships matter. Chance matters. Luck matters.

But there is a profound difference between accepting help and waiting to be rescued.

The first is part of being human.

The second can become a way of life.

So if there is one thing I would tell someone who feels disadvantaged because they don't have the connections, the money, the opportunities, or the people that others seem to have, it would be this:

Don't spend your life staring at the door someone else was given a key to.

Learn to knock.

Learn to build.

Learn to move.

Learn to meet people.

Learn to recognize opportunities that don't look like opportunities at first.

And learn to use whatever you already have.

Because you may not be able to choose the cards you were dealt. But you can decide how well you play them.

Looking back, I can finally see the irony in the way I used to tease my mother.

She went to church and prayed the Rosary.

I looked toward the sacristies.

She was looking for an answer through prayer.

I was looking for one through people.

Perhaps we were both searching for a helping hand.

The difference is that I was looking for someone else's.

Life eventually taught me to look at my own.

And perhaps that is the deeper lesson.

Sometimes life doesn't give you the thing you wanted because it is trying to make you capable of something else.

Not something better.

Not something easier.

Just something that becomes yours.

When you can't have something, you get good at what can replace it.

And sometimes, after years of looking for someone else's hand, you discover that the one you needed most had been there all along—

at the end of your own arm.

When You’re Born Outside the Networks: Building Your Own Life When Nobody Hands You the Keys

Let’s take our discussion of social capital one step further by imagining the life of a person who is born into a modest family, grows up on the outskirts of a less-developed region, and, despite having personal abilities, education, and ambition, spends his entire life dealing with a social network that is much weaker than the one other people inherit.

Let’s say his family isn’t completely without assets. Perhaps they are a family of small property owners, people who own a home and maybe a few other modest assets, but who have never built a particularly strong social network. And the problem isn’t necessarily that they don’t know anyone. The real problem is that those relationships are not necessarily made available to everyone in the family.

Inside the extended family, there may be intense competition, but there can also be something subtler and perhaps even more common: the tendency to keep useful contacts for oneself.

An uncle might know an influential person, have a valuable professional connection, know an executive, a business owner, a politician, or someone who could provide access to an opportunity. Yet that connection is used for his own children, his daughter-in-law, or his son-in-law. When it comes to helping the child of a brother or sister, a niece, or a nephew, suddenly the family relationship seems to lose all its value.

It is almost as if, within the same family, there are several smaller families, each one concerned with protecting and advancing only its own branch.

Our protagonist therefore grows up in a situation where the family name and bloodline give him a sense of belonging, but not necessarily access to opportunities.

And that distinction is crucial.

Because a family can be large and, at the same time, possess very little shared social capital.

Eventually, this person studies, acquires skills, develops expertise, and tries to build a better life. But when he starts looking around, he realizes that something doesn’t add up. He discovers that talent does not automatically translate into social mobility. He understands that there is a gap between being capable and being able to turn your abilities into opportunities.

And this is precisely where marriage enters the picture.

Not, however, in the way we normally think about social climbing.

Our protagonist does not use marriage as a social elevator.

He does not look for a wife from a wealthier family. He does not look for a husband from a higher social class. He does not choose a partner because of the family name, wealth, connections, or social access that person might bring into his life.

Instead, imagine that he falls in love and marries someone who actually comes from an even more modest background than his own.

If he comes from a family of small property owners, she might come from a family of renters. If his family owns at least a home, hers might have spent their entire lives renting. If he inherits a few modest assets, she may bring virtually nothing into the marriage in terms of wealth or social connections.

From the standpoint of social mobility, therefore, this marriage does not represent a move upward.

And that matters because it shows that not everyone experiences marriage as a strategy for social advancement.

For our protagonist, marriage is simply marriage. It is the decision to build a life with someone he loves, not a strategy for entering a more powerful family.

But precisely because of this, he gives up—consciously or unconsciously—one of the ways in which people have historically expanded their social capital.

He does not acquire a wealthier family.

He does not inherit new connections.

He does not automatically enter a higher professional environment.

He does not suddenly find himself surrounded by people who can open doors for him.

His marriage may be perfectly happy and, at the same time, completely neutral from the standpoint of social mobility.

And that distinction is worth emphasizing, because it allows us to separate two things that are often confused: the success of a life and the success of a social-mobility strategy are not necessarily the same thing.

At this point, our protagonist may try to compensate for this lack through other avenues.

He might turn to politics.

But even there, he may encounter a particular problem. Imagine that he lives in a region where the major institutions are controlled by a political camp completely different from his own.

He might be a person on the political left living in a region governed by the right—or, conversely, someone on the right living in an area governed by the left.

If he wants to participate in politics because he genuinely believes in its ideas, of course he can support the opposition. But if his goal is also to build a network capable of generating professional or institutional opportunities, the situation becomes more complicated.

Not because people in the opposition are incapable of helping anyone. They certainly can. But when someone is looking for opportunities that depend, directly or indirectly, on institutions, proximity to those who actually hold power can become an important resource.

And this is where a very particular temptation can emerge: pretending to belong to an environment in which you do not actually recognize yourself.

He might join a political party, spend time in its circles, build relationships with people in that political camp—not because he has changed his beliefs, but because he hopes that proximity will eventually lead to a recommendation or an opportunity.

At that point, however, the issue is no longer simply social.

It becomes a question of identity.

How much is a person willing to sacrifice in order to build social capital?

Is he willing to pretend to be someone he is not?

And above all, if he has to give up his convictions in order to obtain an opportunity, what has he really gained when that opportunity finally arrives?

It is possible that this contradiction will convince him not to use politics as his primary vehicle for advancement.

He may decide that he does not want to be anyone’s client.

He does not want to spend his entire life owing something to a politician.

He does not want someone to be able to remind him forever that his success came through their favor.

And so another, much harder path remains: building an independent network.

Not entering someone else’s network, but creating his own.

Here too, however, he may run into a problem.

He can try joining associations, clubs, organizations, communities, and established groups. He may even look toward much more closed organizations, including those commonly associated in the public imagination with Freemasonry, paramasonic groups, or restricted forms of membership.

But even then, there is no guarantee that the organization exists to advance his goals.

An established structure already has its own hierarchy, its own history, and, above all, people who arrived before him.

And so something apparently paradoxical can happen: he joins an organization because he hopes to receive help, only to discover that before he can receive anything, he has to help those above him.

He has to work for the group.

He has to prove his loyalty.

He has to contribute to the prestige of the people occupying higher positions.

And perhaps, after years have passed, he discovers that the social capital he has accumulated is not really his own. It belongs to the leader, the senior figure, the president, the mentor, or whoever happened to occupy the top of the hierarchy when he arrived.

He entered thinking he would use the network and discovers that he has become one of the network’s resources.

There is no need to imagine conspiracies to understand this dynamic. It is enough to observe how human hierarchies normally work.

And so our protagonist may reach a conclusion: perhaps he needs to build a network that is entirely his own.

The problem is that this is the slowest path.

Social capital cannot be built at the same speed as money. Trust takes time because people first have to get to know you, then understand how you behave, and finally have reasons to trust you and introduce you to other people.

You can decide today to build a network, but you cannot expect to have a community of fifty people willing to support you tomorrow.

Social capital grows slowly, through years of encounters, cooperation, reliability, and reciprocity.

And this creates a particularly difficult situation for someone who starts late.

A person may realize at forty that he needs a stronger network, but he cannot immediately make up for the twenty years of relationships that someone else inherited from their family.

At that point, he may begin thinking about changing his environment.

He may start thinking about geographic mobility.

If opportunities are scarce where he grew up, perhaps he can go somewhere where there are more of them. If the region he lives in is characterized by narrow networks heavily shaped by family ties, perhaps he can look for an environment where relationships are more numerous and the possibilities for building a new reputation are greater.

In a small community, everyone may know who you are, yet nobody may really need what you can do.

In a larger environment, the opposite may happen: nobody knows you, but someone may need exactly the skills you possess.

And this is where moving can become a form of social mobility.

Not because changing cities automatically makes someone richer or more important, but because it changes the environment in which their abilities are tested.

The problem is that even this option may be unavailable.

Imagine that our protagonist has elderly family members who depend on him.

This is not simply an emotional bond. It is a concrete responsibility. If there is no one else available to take care of them, moving to another region may become practically impossible.

And so a paradox emerges.

He knows that he might have more opportunities elsewhere, but he cannot leave.

He knows he needs to build a network, but building one will take years.

He does not want to use marriage as a way into a higher social class.

He does not want to turn his political beliefs into a bargaining chip.

He does not want to surrender himself to an existing organization.

And he cannot simply pack a suitcase and start over somewhere else.

At this point, we are no longer talking about someone who is simply “not trying hard enough.”

We are looking at someone who begins from a position in which many of the conventional paths to social mobility are simultaneously weak or closed.

And perhaps this is precisely where the concept of social capital reveals its real importance.

Because inequality is not only about what you own.

It is also about who you know, who knows you, who is willing to introduce you to someone else, and how large the social world is in which you are able to move.

Our protagonist did not inherit a strong network. He did not acquire one through marriage. He does not want to obtain it through political or organizational affiliation, and he cannot easily change his geographic environment.

So he is left with a much slower, but also much freer, path: building his own network.

And this is where the question becomes genuinely interesting.

The issue is no longer simply how to advance professionally.

It is how a person can build a social environment in which their abilities finally have the chance to produce opportunities.

Perhaps they will have to build that network through their work, culture, the internet, personal projects, writing, and random encounters that, over the years, become friendships, collaborations, and new connections.

They may have to do something nobody ever taught them to do: stop waiting for someone to introduce them into someone else’s world and start building a small world of their own—one that, eventually, other people will want to enter.

Because in the end, the problem is not simply escaping your social class.

The problem is escaping the social network you were assigned at birth when that network is not strong enough to accompany you toward the life you want to build.

And perhaps real emancipation begins at the moment a person realizes that they do not necessarily have to become part of someone else’s network.

They can try to become, slowly, the point from which a new network begins to form.

It will not be easy.

It will not be fast.

And there is no guarantee that it will work.

But at least, for the first time, that person will no longer be looking for someone to open a door for them.

They will be building a house with doors they can eventually open for other people, too.

Relational Capital: In Life, It’s Not Just Who You Are — It’s Who You Know

We’ve been told a beautiful story our entire lives.

Study hard.

Work hard.

Become good at what you do.

Make something of yourself.

And sooner or later, your time will come.

That is the promise of a meritocratic society: if you have enough talent and determination, you can move up.

But there’s a question I’ve often found myself asking:

Move up where? And more importantly, who opens the door for you?

Because the more I observe society, the more I realize that there is a form of wealth we talk about far less than money, real estate, and financial assets.

It’s called relational capital.

Put simply, relational capital is the wealth contained in the people you know, the families you belong to, the circles you move in, and the relationships you can draw on when you need something.

It doesn’t mean having a lot of friends.

You can know half the city and have almost no social influence. Or you can know a handful of people and be part of a network capable of opening doors that remain firmly closed to everyone else.

And that’s where things get interesting.

You Can Have a Great Résumé and Still Have No One to Call

Imagine two young people with the same degree, roughly the same level of education, and the same desire to work.

One graduates and starts sending out résumés. Ten, then fifty, then a hundred. He waits for calls, goes to interviews, gets rejected, and starts over.

The other has a father who knows a business owner. His father makes a phone call. The business owner makes another call. A few days later, an interview is waiting.

Someone might say, “Well, maybe the second person was actually better.”

Maybe.

But that misses the point.

The difference appeared before either person had a real chance to prove their merit.

One had to go looking for an opportunity.

The other already had someone pointing him toward one.

And that may be one of the most underestimated differences in our society.

Not everyone starts from the same line.

And some people don’t even know where the starting line is.

Relational Capital Is Inherited

What I find even more interesting is that relationships, just like money and cultural capital, can be passed from one generation to the next.

A child might grow up in a family where the father knows the local business owner, an uncle is a professional, a cousin works in banking, a family friend is an executive, and an old schoolmate of the parents now holds an influential position.

That child probably doesn’t think of any of this as wealth.

To them, it’s simply normal life.

They grow up watching people meet, phone calls being made, favors being returned, invitations arriving, doors opening.

Without even realizing it, they learn how that world works.

Another kid can be just as intelligent and just as capable, yet grow up completely outside that network.

As an adult, that person first has to discover that such a world exists, then figure out how to get into it, and finally find someone willing to recognize them.

One person was given a map.

The other has to draw the map while walking.

And then someone has the nerve to say the first person got further because they simply worked harder.

There Are Families That Are More “Family” Than Others

You can see this very clearly in small towns.

You don’t need to live in New York, London, or Washington.

You don’t even need to be in a major city.

Spend enough time in a small town and watch how people interact.

Sooner or later, you notice something.

Some families are more “family” than others.

Not necessarily because they have more money.

Maybe they simply have a longer history, a familiar name, an established position, relationships built over decades.

They are the families that always seem to know someone.

If you need a professional, they know someone.

If a business is starting up, they know someone.

If there’s a problem, they know someone.

If you need access to a particular social circle, they know someone who can introduce you.

And when they don’t personally know the right person, they know someone who knows someone.

That is the power of a network.

You don’t have to know everyone.

You just have to know enough people to be able to reach almost anyone through them.

And Then There’s Marriage

This is where the subject becomes even more uncomfortable, because now we’re talking about something deeply personal: choosing a partner.

For centuries, families understood perfectly well that marriage wasn’t simply the union of two individuals.

It was also the union of two families, two fortunes, and—perhaps most importantly—two networks of relationships.

Today, we like to think that all of this belongs to the past and that marriage is simply about love.

And of course, love matters.

But it would be naïve to ignore the fact that we still tend to meet people within the environments we already inhabit.

We attend certain schools, universities, workplaces, clubs, restaurants, neighborhoods, and social circles.

And so, almost inevitably, we meet people who come from worlds similar to our own.

No conspiracy is necessary.

Nobody has to decide from above who should marry whom.

It’s enough for society to be organized into circles.

And when two people get married, it isn’t always just two individuals who come together.

Two networks meet.

Two families.

Two sets of assets.

Two reputations.

Two groups of connections.

And sometimes those two networks merge into something considerably more powerful than either one was before.

That’s Why Some People Would Rather Stay Single

There’s an interesting behavior that can seem strange if we look at relationships only through the lens of romance.

Some people would rather remain single than enter a relationship with someone they perceive as being too far removed from their own social environment.

It isn’t always snobbery.

Sometimes it’s simply an unconscious awareness that a relationship can change your position within society.

A partner can bring you into a new world—or pull you away from one.

They can introduce you to new people.

They can change how others perceive you.

They can even change the opportunities available to you.

And above all, they can shape the social environment in which your children will grow up.

At that point, marriage is no longer simply a private matter.

Whether we like it or not, it can also become one of the mechanisms through which social capital is passed on to the next generation.

The Social Elevator Isn’t Free

This is where the rhetoric of social mobility starts to crack.

We imagine the social elevator as something public.

You walk in.

You press the button.

You go upstairs.

But maybe society is more like a huge building filled with doors.

The elevator exists.

The problem is getting into the building.

And, more importantly, getting inside.

Because you can have talent, education, and ambition, but if you don’t know anyone and don’t even know where to knock, an enormous amount of your energy will be spent simply trying to find the entrance.

That’s the part of meritocracy we talk about the least.

Merit may help you win the race, but first you have to be allowed into the race.

And not everyone gets the same invitation.

The Power of a Phone Call

Think about a simple sentence:

“I’ll introduce you to someone.”

It sounds like almost nothing.

But it can completely change the situation.

Because when someone introduces you, they transfer a little of their own credibility to you.

I know you.

You know him.

I believe you’re someone worth listening to.

So I’ll introduce you.

From that moment on, you’re no longer a complete stranger.

That is relational capital.

It’s the phone call made before the résumé is sent.

It’s the dinner you were invited to.

It’s the group chat someone added you to.

It’s the professional who introduces you to another professional.

It’s someone saying, “I know your father.”

It’s, “Aren’t you so-and-so’s son?”

These sound like ordinary phrases.

But behind them there may be thirty, fifty, or even a hundred years of family history.

The Real Wealth of the Elite

Maybe we should stop thinking about elites simply as people who have a lot of money.

Their real wealth may be something far less visible.

It may be the list of people they can call.

A house can be sold.

A company can go bankrupt.

A bank account can be emptied.

A relationship built over decades, however, can continue generating opportunities.

One person introduces you to another.

That person brings you into another circle.

There, you meet more people.

One of them offers you an opportunity.

The opportunity generates money.

Money generates status.

Status gives you access to new circles.

And those circles generate new relationships.

The cycle feeds itself.

And perhaps this is how relational capital slowly turns into financial capital.

And What About the People Outside?

This is where we reach the part I find most uncomfortable.

People who are born outside these networks often have to build three things at the same time:

skills, money, and relationships.

Someone born inside a network may inherit at least part of all three.

That doesn’t mean their life will be easy.

It doesn’t mean they are incompetent.

It doesn’t even mean they won’t have to work hard.

It simply means that when they arrive at a door, they may already know someone on the other side.

And that is an enormous advantage.

Because one person may spend ten years building a network that another person received for free at birth.

The Capital You Can’t See

Perhaps that is precisely why relational capital is so difficult to recognize.

It doesn’t show up in a bank account.

It isn’t listed on a résumé.

You can’t see it in someone’s apartment.

It doesn’t have a stock-market price.

And yet it can follow a person throughout their entire life.

It’s knowing who to call.

It’s being recognized.

It’s being invited.

It’s having someone willing to say, “Come with me. I’ll introduce you.”

It’s having a last name someone recognizes.

It’s being able to walk into a room where other people don’t even know the meeting is taking place.

And perhaps that is the real difference between someone who possesses relational capital and someone who doesn’t.

The person without it has to search for opportunities.

The person who has it is often told that the opportunities exist.

In the End, It’s Not Just Who You Are

I’m not saying merit doesn’t exist.

I’m not saying everything is controlled by families.

I’m not saying every wealthy person is a beneficiary of nepotism and every poor person is a misunderstood genius.

Reality is much more complicated.

I’m saying something much simpler.

When we judge someone’s success, we usually see only the final result.

We see the successful professional, the entrepreneur, the politician, the executive, the prosperous family.

We don’t see all the people that person met along the way.

We don’t see the doors that opened.

We don’t see the introductions.

We don’t see the advice they received.

We don’t see the relational capital accumulated before that person ever began building their financial wealth.

So perhaps the question shouldn’t simply be:

“How much is this person worth?”

Maybe we should also ask:

“How much is the network they belong to worth?”

Because in life, we can inherit a house.

We can inherit money.

We can inherit a business.

But we can also inherit something far more subtle:

the people our parents know.

And maybe, in the end, the real social elevator isn’t the one that takes you from the ground floor to the top floor.

It’s the one that lets you meet the people who own the elevator.